Manchester City have spent more than £315m on central midfield players alone in a summer rebuild that has seen the club publicly deny interest in Enzo Fernandez before signing him anyway. Despite the hefty investment and a squad that won two trophies last year, the chaotic final weeks of the window have raised questions about the club's reputation for shrewd transfer business.
A window of contradictions
The season had barely finished when the call came at boardroom level to make public that City were not interested in signing Fernandez this summer. Fittingly for a chaotic transfer window, the Blues did exactly what they said they wouldn't do. The deal saw City pay more than they would have done, wait longer than necessary, and face a very real chance it wouldn't happen at all, especially given Chelsea could have pulled the plug as Monaco had done on Chelsea's move for a replacement.
At the Etihad, there is confidence that the recruitment is good enough to expect Maresca to fight across all four competitions. With depth cited in every position despite wholesale changes, there is even an internal belief that City are in better shape for this season than they were last year. Yet alarm bells remain over how City ended up where they were in those frantic final weeks.
Bouaddi and the waiting game
Fernandez followed a similar pattern to Ayyoub Bouaddi. Aware that Lille wanted to keep the Moroccan teenager for another year and would only countenance selling him for around £85m, City waited more than a month after the season had started before deciding to pay what Lille wanted. All that time spent negotiating hadn't earned any money off.
Bouaddi was one of several players seen as a potential arrival during the summer tour in late July and early August. Sporting director Hugo Viana's presence in Asia was assumed to indicate confidence, but as a week went by with no progress, that turned into confusion. While City were away, Barcelona's interest in Rodri accelerated, and sources spoke bullishly about the Blues going above and beyond with replacements, though City did not get close to making that a reality.
A smaller squad and increased risk
The club didn't match the one-in-for-every-out approach Maresca made clear was expected, leaving the new manager with just 20 senior outfield players. That is the lower limit for what the new manager wants and one fewer than Pep Guardiola had last season, before Marc Guehi and Antoine Semenyo arrived in January. The squad is so small in no small part because of the departures of several players featured in an Amazon documentary last August, who were talked up as the future of the club. Nico Gonzalez, Savinho, Omar Marmoush and Tijjani Reijnders were all supposed to be part of the rebuild yet have been discarded, for profit but still discarded.
That has created even more churn in a summer where City waved goodbye to the best manager in the world after a decade of stability. Maresca was presented as the continuity candidate, yet just three players remain from the last time he was here three years ago.
Red flags for the future
City still believe they have backed Maresca, and multiple transfer records broken would point to that. Everything may become clear at the Etihad in the coming weeks as things click, but it has been a bumpy summer and more friction would not be surprising given the scale of change. Beyond that, clubs may hold City to ransom in future negotiations, and agents of targets could demand at least parity with what City have paid in wages in 2026. City are still banking on a Blue future, but there have been some red flags this summer that make that riskier than it could have been.
