Manchester City kept pushing right to the final moments of the transfer window, flexing the kind of financial muscle that has left rivals questioning how they are supposed to compete.
Not so long ago, with Txiki Begiristain guiding their recruitment, City appeared to operate above the frenzy. This time, though, it looked far more like an unapologetic spending blitz. After overwhelming the rest of Europe with an £85million bid for Ayyoub Bouaddi — close to twice the valuation placed on him in June — and committing £116million to Elliot Anderson, most clubs would have considered their central midfield business complete.
City did not. They met Chelsea’s early £120million valuation of Enzo Fernandez without hesitation and went even higher, paying £125million. Add another £65million for Everton’s Iliman Ndiaye, and their deadline-day outlay alone reached £190million.
Their ability to sell should not be ignored, helped considerably by a productive academy. City brought in close to £90million from talent sales last year, following more than £120million the previous summer. Rodri’s £65million move to Barcelona also belongs in the equation, while the number of players willingly moved on underlines a wider truth of the Premier League’s inflated market: expensive missteps no longer seem to carry the punishment they once did.
Savinho is a case in point. Signed for £30million and handed Riyad Mahrez’s old No26 shirt, he was meant to help fill that void but never got close. Yet Tottenham’s decision-makers, seemingly intent on finding their own reset, paid an extraordinary £75million for him, handing City a profit of more than £40million on a player who had been no more than average. It is hard to call it anything other than madness.
Manchester City have forked out £125m for the Chelsea midfielder Enzo Fernandez
And that is on the back of spending £116m for Elliot Anderson from Nottingham Forest
Omar Marmoush didn’t float City’s boat either, having arrived for £50million to take the weight off Erling Haaland. It turned out he couldn’t perform against deep-lying defenders but with Spurs around, there was another profit to register. Tottenham’s eventual fee will be £60million.
And then there’s also the bigger picture, here. Sure, it will bring the forces of holy hell raining down on those of us who point it out – accusations of bitterness and bias and the dreaded ‘red cartel’ conspiracy theory – but let it be said.
City’s capacity to pick off the best players of virtually any other club as it pleases them, this summer, has laughed in the face of that opaque and interminable legal process by which the Premier League’s 115 charges of alleged financial impropriety and evasion are being supposedly tested.
It’s approaching two years since the opening of the ‘Manchester City v the Premier League’ case and there are no longer even rumours or whispers as to when we might see a verdict.
Not so long back, the Manchester Evening News ran a line about City’s barrister David Pannick spending proportionately more time on House of Lords business and less on the City case. As if to say the whole thing is slipping away.
Bloomberg published a recent piece about the Abu Dhabis expressing interest in spending a fortune on British defence technology and ‘the 115’ being an awkward rider to Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s friendly first phone call with United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan – who is the brother of City’s owner. City deny all the charges.
All that can be said with certainty is that their capacity to swoop for other Premier League clubs’ best players – Forest’s Anderson, Bournemouth’s Antoine Semenyo and Everton’s Ndiaye – yet face no legal outcome, positive or negative, depresses and maddens all who look for virtue and transparency in the game.
Everton are not far off their own third anniversary of being hit with a 10-point deduction, later reduced to six, for overspending by £19.5million – barely eight months of Erling Haaland’s vast salary – while in the throes of a relentless fight for Premier League survival. So it’s not hard to see why the departure of their excellent and much-admired playmaker Ndiaye up the M62 to City sticks in the throat for that club’s fans.
City also spent blew the rest of Europe out of the water by tabling £85million for Ayyoub Bouaddi – not far off double what his market price was back in June
After being hit with their own points deduction for overspending, it’s not hard not to see why the departure of their excellent playmaker Ndiaye to City sticks in the throat of Everton fans
Ndiaye wasn’t even City’s first choice. The club’s move for Liverpool’s Cody Gakpo collapsed by a process of deadline-day dominoes, so Ndiaye it had to be.
A product of Everton’s capacity to find and develop good players from the lower tiers – an honest, decent pursuit of value and talent – is about to find out whether he will be competing in the Champions League or Carabao Cup for City this season.
It was Grealish, a player signed for a City club-record sum when he was the bright new accessory, who Everton ended up with on Tuesday. He is open, generous, likeable and if anyone can extract the necessary extra self-discipline out of him then it will be David Moyes, a manager who has spent the summer trying to squeeze every last drop out of a limited budget.
Let’s hope it can happen. As the wait for that Premier League verdict extends towards a third year and City go on as if impervious to it, there would be something rather satisfactory about that.