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Football INDEX Insight: In-depth on Manchester City

In this set of articles, I’m going to focus on a specific team and analyse their presence on the INDEX, including their dividend potential, player prices and what to expect from them this season, starting with last season’s Premier League champions, Manchester City.

The Returns

When it comes to returning dividends Manchester City are up there with the best, yielding the second highest performance dividends last season with £2.73 in total, second to only Real Madrid (£2.86) and when you watch them play it’s not difficult to see why.

While they are big earners as a whole, the caveat is that these earnings are spread across many of their players. City had 12 winners last season, only Arsenal had more with 14 as well as City’s top earner being David Silva who earned 19.8% of their dividends, compared to 38% being the average for the top ten dividend earning teams. Therefore, trying to pin down the right buy can be quite difficult.

To break it down further, City ranked 3rd in defender dividends with £0.86, and 2nd and 9th in Midfielder and Forward dividends with £1.23 and £0.53 respectively. You can see City’s top earners and their average performance score below.

But of course, Performance isn’t everything. Media-money is just as good as the rest of it. Unfortunately for Manchester City, they are far from the best at earning it. In fact, despite coasting to a 100 point championship season last year, City as a whole only earned 39p in media dividends.

To put that into context, that’s a £3.73 less than media-leaders Liverpool and is the same amount as Wayne Rooney, who was out of the top 200 by December and unable to compete for media anymore. To drive the point home, the Manchester side’s top earner was Sergio Aguero, with a fairly demoralising 12p, which I believe was won when he was involved in a car crash (so not even football related!).

Premium Prices

When it comes to this dividend dominant team, getting your hands on them comes at a price these days. City’s highest priced player is now Sergio Aguero at £5.45, which isn’t too expensive when you look at the top of the market, but the premium status comes from the number of players they have in the £3-£5 bracket, many of which have done very little in terms of performance dividends to warrant such prices.

This includes the likes of Gabriel Jesus (£4.59), Sane (£4.55) and Sterling (£4.44) who have returned just four-pence between them in performance dividends. While KDB (£5.40), David Silva ((£3.40) and John Stones (£3.09) have arguably done more to earn their prices thus far.

What to expect

This season I think it’ll be more of the same where dividends are concerned, in fact, I think they could battle Real Madrid for the top spot once again. Los Blancos earned £1.20 from the reduced player pools of the Champions League last season and I expect out of the two, City will progress further this time around.

The loss of Ronaldo hasn’t helped matters, with CR7 making up £0.88 (34%) Of all Madrid’s dividends last season. However, Madrid have come out of the blocks quickest, with Kroos, Carvajal, Benzema and Ramos (twice!) already picking up treble day wins.

As for individuals, the clock is against star man Kevin De Bruyne with up to three months out of action so early in the season, the fact they play all six of the promoted teams from the last two seasons in that time probably doesn’t help him either.

However, that could help others boost their returns, with David Silva already appearing to play further forward against Huddersfield as well taking (and scoring) free-kicks and appearing to share corner duty with Bernardo Silva, who will also more than likely benefit from more game time.

At the back, top yielding defender Nicolas Otamendi is yet to feature with rumours of not being fully fit. If a solid back line can be built in his absence, his place in the team and dividends potential could be hugely threatened, but as it stands no one is safe at centre-back.

Aymeric Laporte. however, may be one of the safer bets in the City defence starting his first full season and looking to pick up his first performance dividends.

Another player hoping to pick up their first win is the now fully fit wing-back Benjamin Mendy, who has started very impressively putting his innate attacking prowess on show, whilst his frequent crossing has already helped to amass three assists. Even Kyle Walker popped up with a goal and 200+ score!

Overall, Pep’s style of play and winning ways are certainly setting the standard of performance, with early signs this season that their form isn’t set to change any time soon, making the Citizens an essential in any dividend-seeking portfolio.

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