Hey.
It usually takes 2-3 years of patient rebuilding to get the wage structure at Man City under any semblance of sanity. A few tips:
1. Play hard ball while negotiating. A player will usually settle for lesser if you bargain hard enough. I signed Jovetic and Hazard in first season. They both demanded about 120-140k, with 25-35 as appearance bonus and all that. I finally signed both at a contract of 80k a week. With about 10-15 as appearance fees and 10% wage rise per season.
2. While signing, increasing sign on bonus helps. It makes living with a lowered wage that much more acceptable to the players, and the sign on is a one time payment only. Dont go crazy, just pump it by 20% of the asked bonus max.
3. While selling, if a player demands money to move, reject it. Then offer him again. If the club interested is desperate enough they'll buy him. Robinho, when I was selling him, asked me to pay him 200k per week! I told him to ****** off. Then offered him again. This time Tottenham (the club buying) offered him the right deal and he moved without any weekly payment.
4. While selling, reduce the asking prince by 20%. Being Man City, you dont really desperately need the money from transfer, although it never hurts. So while selling a player on insane wages who is not desperately wanted by a big club (Say Real Madrid, Barca, or EPL big four etc.) lowering his asking price gives the buying club some more money to arrive at an agreement with him over wages.
5. Final extreme, tried this once and it worked, completely ruin your relationship with the player. I did this with Robinho. The idea was to make him so ****** off that he would want to move desperately even if that meant agreeing a lower wage. Fined Robinho 2 weeks wages for missing training while he was already pleading unfair treatment for an official warning given for the same offence a week ago. Worked like a charm. (See point 3).
6. Reduce squad size. Playing in the EPL with the whole 25 man squad nonsense, you will have to drastically trim your squad anyhow. In the first season buy some youth talent (Bale, Rodwell, Hazard, Jovetic, Kadlec etc.) coz they will perform well coz motivated, ask for lesser wages, and dont have to be registered coz they'll be under 21 for a few years.
7. Finally, while signing regens, take a good look at the wage demands. Regens usually agree to contracts worth a lot less than originally asked for.
Hope this helps.
Cheers
Anirudh.
I sign them in January then they come in June. After that you can offer them in August but there are loan offers. So loan them for 1.5m£ for each guy. 1 season later they come from loan and sell them. I made at least 50-70m£ per year by that. I feel guilty sometimes playing with their futures but why not make extra profit at least 50m£ that's a lot i think.
You also get to know who wants a new contract and all that.