On and on Manchester City went, spending to the bitter end of the transfer window with such monumental resource at their disposal that there have been times when many of the rest have wondered why they even bothered.
There was a time, under Txiki Begiristain’s oversight of their transfer business, when they would sail serenely above this madness, though it’s a naked cash-fest now. Having blown 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 – and laying out that cool £116million on Elliot Anderson, any other club in this land would have been done in central midfield.
City took on Chelsea’s £120million early asking price for Enzo Fernandez without blinking. They paid £125million. A further £65million for Everton‘s Iliman Ndiaye took it to £190million on deadline day alone.
Out there in the rest of the football eco-system, other clubs have become minnows in City’s vast pool of spends. Barcelona paid out £12million to Arsenal for Gabriel Jesus, whom City dispensed with four years ago. Everton brought back the one-time £100million City signing Jack Grealish for another go at redemption. Spurs became a rehabilitation home for Etihad rejects.
City are certainly good sellers, too, thanks in part to their academy, and earned the best part of £90million on talent last year on top of more than £120million the summer before. There’s Rodri’s departure to Barcelona for £65million to factor in, while the many players they’ve willingly shipped on reflect the way you no longer seem to be punished for mistakes amid the lunatic economics of the Premier League.
At £30million, Savinho was supposed to replace Riyad Mahrez, whose No26 jersey he took at City, and he didn’t even come close. But the Tottenham executives at the tiller are so desperate for redemption that they forked out a wild £75million on him, making it a £40million-plus profit on an average player. 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.
