When a player leaves Coventry the club may make a profit on the deal. If the player is sold for more than their book value it is a profit, for less a loss.

Coventry had to offload as many expensive players as possible when they went down. In 2002 there was some attempt to trade from expensive players to less expensive but when this didn't result in promotion they had to go too.

The graphs below show ins and outs, and the net figures. It is important to note that the first three graphs show the changes made to the book values of players, and this may NOT match with quoted actual transfer fees received. SO for example if Robbie Keane was bought for £6m in 1999 his value on the books may have dropped to £4m if he was on a three year contract. (For a longer explanation of player book values have a look at the amortisation page). Selling him for £13m to Inter brought in £13m to the club, this was a book profit of £9m, not the £7m difference between his purchase price and his sale price.

Thee fourth shows the profit made from the sale of players. This highlights the situation where a player is sold who has no book value at all. In this case Gary McSheffrey who was brought in for nothing and sold for a £4m profit.

The other year to look at his 2003 where transfer fees of over £18m for players sold made the club only £1.1m profit. Similarly in 2004 over £6m of sales happened, but the club lost money on this.