CITY anticipated a Tom Cleverley windfall on transfer deadline day but it never happened. Simon Parker talks exclusively to joint-chairman Julian Rhodes about the fall-out and where that leaves the club now.

Q: It must have come as a massive disappointment that Tom Cleverley did not sign permanently for Aston Villa, given the ten per cent sell-on clause for City. How did you sleep Monday night?

A: Very badly, as you can imagine. Mark (Lawn) and I were doing cartwheels when it looked like the deal would go through for £7.5million.

I found out the following morning they had resurrected something with Villa but got nervous when I heard it was only a loan.

He's only got a year left in his contract and you do worry he will run that down and leave for nothing in the summer.

I don't think Villa ever had a problem with making it permanent but Tom wanted better personal terms.

I'm not sure how that will get resolved in January. They have an option to buy him then but I assume the same obstacles will be in the way.

Q: But City will still receive something from Manchester United?

A: Yes but it's a smaller percentage from the loan fee and obviously nowhere near what we could have got. It's a shame because with the Leeds game and Cleverley going, we'd have met our target in a week.

We thought all summer that he would move and were hoping that would be the thing that satisfied our requirements concerning transfer income.

Q: You talk about a target. This is the overspend figure that City add to the budget before every season?

A: We adopted a new strategy for 2012/13 to set ambitious targets. You call it exceptional income but I look at it as part of our trade – we play cups and sell players.

We decided if we tried to get a better squad and spent more money, we'd be able to do better in the league and cups and obviously have players here that would be more valuable.

The first year we had a £500,000 overspend but went to a cup final and met that total plus more quite happily.

Last year we were even more ambitious and set it at £1.25million above, knowing we had Nahki (Wells) to sell.

That was always the plan, whatever anyone thinks. If we got knocked out the cups and no kids came through then we'd have to sell him in January because he had only 18 months left of his contract at that point – look at what we're talking about now with Cleverley.

If we'd have waited until the summer, Nahki could have wound his contract down and we'd have been in a similar situation.

As it stands, we will be posting a very small profit because there was the Mark Stewart fee to pay out as well. The first draft says £40,000 but it will be less than that.

Q: The budget was reduced by £500,000 for this season. But you have had to top it up?

A: We cut the overspend this year to £750,000 but, just before the season started, we all realised the squad wasn't as strong as we wanted.

We put in another £250,000 to take it up to £1m, which means we're now about ten per cent down on last year. We've committed about £100,000 of that so far but I'm sure we're going to have to dip in to the loan market at some point and we've just signed Filipe Morais and Ben Williams for another four months - to see where we are come January.

Q: The board clearly trust Phil Parkinson to spend wisely with that strategy?

A: It's important for people to realise that it's a team effort between myself, Mark, David Baldwin and Phil when it comes to setting a budget and bringing in players.

We all knew we were still short on numbers and had to enhance the budget. I'm not so sure I would be happy to adopt this strategy with other managers but Phil is very good.

Look at the players he's brought to this club and what he and his management team do with them when they are here. He gets the best out of them and that's why we don't mind doing this.

If you had somebody who blatantly just wasted the money all the time, you would never do it again. But we have that faith in Phil.

Look at how far we've come since he has been here. We need to keep building within what we believe are reasonable means.

The ultimate goal is to be in the Championship in the next few years and we feel that Phil can get us there as part of the team. That's why we gave him a three-year contract last summer.

Q: It still sounds like a high risk to take?

A: Some will say that but what's given us the confidence to do it is what has been going on with our youth system. You talk about Fabian Delph, Tom Cleverley and Andre Wisdom, all products of our youth system now playing in the Premier League, as well as George Green at Everton.

We've also got a great crop of kids still in our academy. So we believe we've got enough assets there to fall back on. The problem you do have is that they don't necessarily fall when you want them to.

That's why you can never rule out having to sell a first-team player. It's always the final backstop.

If we get to January and haven't progressed any further in the cups, nothing is happening with Cleverley and  so on then we'll have to look at that.

It's a fact of life - otherwise we won't be able to pay the bills.

But when we started this we had just survived in League Two. Now we're fifth in League One, having been to a cup final along the way. It's working so far.

The alternative is to set a much lower budget, you can't get the players in you want and the chances are you'd struggle or you get relegated.

You might get very, very lucky and produce a squad out of nothing but it's very rare.

Q: By first-team players, the obvious name would be James Hanson?

A: Yes, I suppose, but that would be very reluctantly. We desperately don't want to sell James. He probably has to go down as one of the best signings this club has ever made.

I read the article with Phil and I agree I'm amazed that we haven't had any real interest shown in him. We've had a few sniffs but nowhere near the kind of level I would value James at.

Just add everything up; what he's done, the story behind him, the goals he's scored and the way he's applied himself. He's living the dream of what everyone in the stands wants to do.

We don't want to lose that kind of player but if everything else goes pear-shaped we'll have to look to the first team.

But nobody wants to lose James Hanson; I didn't want to lose Nahki Wells. I would have loved for them to be our strike partnership for years to come.

But unfortunately if we were going to sign Nahki Wells again, we wouldn't have been able to afford all the other players we signed.

Q: How much of this overspend have City covered so far?

A: I'd say we're up to £350,000 already and we're only just into September.

We do have add-ons for Nahki that are clocking up, there was the Leeds game and we've got a small fee for Tom.

If George Green signs another contract at Everton, there's more money there, and we've got a number of youth-team players that big clubs are looking at.

People say you don't want to sell your kids. But if the money is used to help the first team get to the Championship, which we all want to do, then I don't think anyone will grumble.

Q: Will City get any money for Fabian Delph's England appearance?

A: People are missing the point a bit because he's been sold on from Leeds. If Leeds receive something, we'll get a small percentage of that – but it's unlikely to be a lot.

If Andre Wisdom or George Green play for England, then we will do okay.

We're further down the chain with Delph. It's like with Danny Ward, who has been at Huddersfield and Bolton and we still get little dribs and drabs from him.

The disappointing thing is that had Cleverley gone, we might have reviewed things again and enhanced the budget a little bit more. That isn't going to be possible now.

Q: So drawing MK Dons in the Capital One Cup hasn't done you any favours?

A: It was just our luck that we got the team who beat Man United. If we had got Man U away, that would have been worth about £750,000. We could have had a cheque for £1.5million from them – but now we're getting a small one!