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The club's latest balance sheet confirms the grim statistic that City will always be a selling club.

Despite the year ending June 30, 1998, showing that City made an after-tax profit of £170,654, the club would have sustained a swingeing loss but for cash brought in from the sale of star prospect Jonathan Greening to Manchester United.

The £350,000 raked in for 19-year-old Greening last February, plus the £210,000 sell-on from the big-money move of Jon McCarthy from Port Vale to Birmingham, together with £75,000 due on games played to complete the balance of Darren Williams' sale to Sunderland, offset this year's trading loss of £468,104. As with the initial transfer of McCarthy to Vale in 1995, City are hugely dependent on generating cash from the sale of players.

Gate receipts are not sufficient at the present levels to sustain the club, especially in a year when wages alone smashed through the £1million barrier for the first time in the club's history.

Declared Douglas Craig in his chairman's report: "We continue to depend...on monies realised from transfers of players and without this additional income the club could not survive."

Ominously for City, added the chairman in his report to be presented with the balance sheet at the annual meeting on December 14, transfer income was now threatened by the 'Bosman' ruling.

Though fans bemoaned an apparent lack of big-money signings, investment was being made, insisted the club, in offering more lucrative terms to players.Added Craig: "The board will seek to protect the club's investment in young players by trying to negotiate longer-term contracts with those players showing real potential. But the players themselves are sometimes reluctant to commit themselves to such contracts.

"There is no easy solution to this problem. It is now a fact of football life and we have to live it and manage it as best we can."

Income at the club stood at £1,150,550, just under £3,000 up on the 1997 figure. However, payroll costs at the club in the same period had risen by almost 14 percent.

This year's wage bill, which includes all employees - not just players - accounted for £1,159,062. That's an increase of just short of £140,000 on the previous year's payroll costs.

Another big increase was in the 'maintenance of pitches', in which the cost of work at Bootham Crescent and at the new Wigginton Road training base more than doubled to £29,041.

Home gate receipts and season ticket sales were back towards their level of two years ago. The cash raised until June 1998 was £473,379 as opposed to £483,267 in 1997.

Chairman Craig added, however, that the board was determined to run the club efficiently.

"It is the board's firm intention to maintain the club's financial stability and its assets of a well-maintained ground, good quality pitch and training facilities, so that good quality playing staff can be assembled."Maintaining this high quality takes money, and as can be seen from the...accounts, such funds are not available from the club's normal trading activities."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.