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Bad old City, at it again – ruining football since 2008. The Blues have embarked on another summertime spending spree, thumbing their noses at Uefa’s attempts to make clubs spend sensibly, and lighting up cigars with large wads of banknotes.

Or are they?

City are owned and run by consummate businessmen, and last summer appeared to

introduce a new era of sobriety in their spending, with transfer fees and salaries both being curtailed.

So why, this summer, have they already shelled out around £45m, and are in hot pursuit of Edinson Cavani, Isco and Pepe – and possibly one or two more – which could take their spending in this transfer window beyond the £100m mark.

You can hear the clicking noise as the snipers load up their rifles, ready to take more pot-shots at City’s ‘profligacy’.

Blues fans are used to it by now. When Sheikh Mansour transformed the club by taking over five years ago, it upset just about everyone who wasn’t a fan of the club.

The established rich clubs did not like a set of lottery-winning Manchester oiks elbowing their way onto the top table, and grabbing their share of the trophies and the cash.

The poorer clubs left behind to fight over scraps were simply jealous and the upshot was that the Blues have taken flak for their new-found wealth ever since – hence that shrewd City banner proclaiming that they have been ruining football since 2008.

The implication of the banner, an absolutely correct one, was that greed and the financial imbalance between the haves and have-nots existed long before City crossed that divide – but they became the whipping boys of the disgruntled masses.

Amidst the criticism, City – under the careful gaze of chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak and his staff – have plotted a smart course.

They knew vast investment was needed in the initial phase to quickly thrust City into title contention and into the Champions League.

With that achieved, they scaled down the spending last summer. Indeed, over the last two transfer windows, City have a net spend of around £15m, a fraction of the net spends of Chelsea (£78m), United (£53m) and Liverpool (£50m), and also less

than Southampton, Aston Villa, Sunderland, Newcastle, West Ham, Stoke and QPR.

Last summer’s spend of around £52m has been largely balanced out by the sales of Mario Balotelli, Nigel de Jong, Adam Johnson and Vladimir Weiss.

The trouble was that it was a false economy.

New chief executive Ferran Soriano and his football director Txiki Begiristain soon recognised that this was a club which needed investment in the first team, not cutbacks.

And this summer is the perfect time to do it.

Of course, City cannot simply ride rough-shod over two sets of financial fair play rules, one brought in by Uefa, the other by

the Premier League. But the Blues are quietly confident that they will meet the requirements of both those organisations, even with a big spend this summer.

Uefa’s financial fair play rules were introduced in a bid to stop clubs spending beyond their means, and next month they will begin to identify clubs they feel are trying to cheat the system.

Clubs who flout the rules will face financial measures and, ultimately, bans from European competition.

But one central tenet of Uefa’s rules gives leeway to clubs whose spending is in the red compared to income, but who can also show that they are making serious inroads into closing the gap.

City have made remarkable strides in that regard, last season halving their losses from £197m to £98m.

Earlier this season Soriano predicted that they will again halve that figure to around £50m and that break-even will be achieved in the near future.

City have also made the powerful point to Uefa that the owners have not simply splurged the money on players and their wages – there has been around £150m invested in the youth structure of the club, a clear indication of their good intentions and of the long-term nature of their involvement.

Much has been made this week of a claim that City pay the highest wages in world sport, supposedly paying an average £100,000-a-week to push baseball team LA Dodgers into second place.

While the methodology of reaching that figure has to be questioned, what is not in doubt is that the Blues are now cutting back on wage expenditure.

Having already lost Mario Balotelli off the wage bill – he was said to be on £170,000-a-week – they will also trim big earners Kolo Toure, Wayne Bridge and Roque Santa Cruz, and possibly lose their second-top earner Carlos Tevez, who bags £198,000-a-week.

New boys Fernandinho and Jesus Navas have been taken on at lower, five-figure levels.

City will also, no doubt, be selling this summer, although they want players in before they start shipping out, and will not start outgoing business until new manager Manuel

Pellegrini has assessed his squad when he arrives.

The sales could include Tevez, Edin Dzeko and Joleon Lescott, all of whom would command a hefty fee, hence slashing the net spend considerably. But all of this weighing has to be set against a

back-drop of City’s growth as a serious financial power.

Last season the Blues overhauled traditional giants AC Milan and Liverpool in terms of revenue, soaring to £231m on the back of Sergio Aguero’s title-winning goal.

That figure is on the up, as City will again undergo leaps forward in terms of broadcasting and commercial revenue.

Since the takeover, the Blues have almost doubled their

revenue from broadcasting – from £48m to £88m – and matchday revenue is up from £21m to £31m.

But the biggest increase for the Blues, by far, comes in the commercial revenue department.

A slick global marketing operation, revved up by trips to North America and the Far East, and backed by trophy success, has increased

commercial revenue by almost SIX times, from £18m to £112m.

This summer’s spending recognises that, without building a squad capable of winning trophies, the other aspects of the business are undermined.

And City’s spending is, increasingly, being financed by its own revenue – and not simply being funded by a rich man’s pockets.