“People are saying: Man City are spending again!” Pep Guardiola remarked at the end of January. “Every successful team in this country in the last two or three decades spent more than the other clubs.”
But there was more to his point. City have spent nearly £177million on five players this January, more by far than any other club in Europe, in a bid to reinvigorate their faltering season, something that is unlikely to alter their reputation as big spenders.
Vitor Reis (£29.5m), Abdukodir Khusanov (£33.5m), Omar Marmoush (£59m) and, on deadline day, Nico Gonzalez (£49.9m) have been brought in to inject some quality and energy into the squad, while Juma Bah (£4.75m but immediately loaned out to Lens) has been identified as a talented player who could either play for City in the future or be sold for profit.
Having seen their team’s form slump in recent months, many City supporters believe this kind of investment has been long overdue.
“In the last five years we are 11th in net spend,” Guardiola added recently, and it not the first time he has quoted those figures.
They have been compiled by City and relate to the net spend of top European clubs. City are below five Premier League teams — Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur — as well as Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich, Milan, Juventus and Atletico Madrid.
City monitor the market for various trends relating to contracts and signings — something they demonstrated in a club-produced documentary in 2022 where director of football Txiki Begiristain and former chief of football operations Omar Berrada discussed their operation in front of the cameras.
City’s ‘Big Six’ competitors are ahead of them on that particular list but in truth most Premier League teams are. Over the same five-year period, City rank 20th of the 25 teams that have played in the competition.
They have continued to invest in their team, of course, with Jack Grealish and Josko Gvardiol two of the bigger recent deals, but a combination of spending relatively low fees and selling academy players, plus Julian Alvarez’s £81.5m move to Atletico, means that City have plenty of money in the bank and, crucially, the ability to comply with the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules while they spend it.
But actually spending it was not on the agenda as recently as the start of December. Heading towards the winter window, City had just one objective: a box-to-box midfielder.
Ironically, that figure — Gonzalez — only arrived on the last day of the window. On Friday night, the message from City was that they had no intention of paying his release clause. By Monday morning, in the aftermath of a chastening 5-1 defeat at Arsenal, they had agreed to pay the figure after all — just structured slightly differently.
It begs the question: how have City juggled the demands of adding quality to the squad for the immediate future with ensuring they get the right players for the long-term?
Is Nico Gonzalez the midfielder who can steady City’s midfield in Rodri’s absence? (MIGUEL RIOPA/AFP via Getty Images)
When it was confirmed in October that Hugo Viana would leave Sporting CP to replace Begiristain as director of football next summer, both City and particularly the Portuguese side were keen to stress that Viana would only start to focus his attentions on City at the end of the season.
There was some acknowledgement that he may start to get his feet under the table towards the end of the campaign, and the current expectation is that he will take on some duties in March, but his role in City’s transfer window was accidentally revealed via an unlikely source. At the start of January, a City fan bumped into Begiristain in the city centre and asked for a picture. It did not go unnoticed for long that standing in the background was Viana.
Those who have held discussions with City during the past few weeks, speaking anonymously to protect relationships, say that Viana has been heavily involved in the club’s business, and specifically so with the signing of Reis from Palmeiras.
The 19-year-old Brazilian centre-back was well-known to top European clubs, including City, and Viana was among those who had tracked his progress for his role at Sporting. But towards the end of last year it was Arsenal who were in the driving seat.
Perhaps City’s relatively late decision to make significant moves in the market helped win the race. Palmeiras had told suitors that they would not sell him before this summer’s Club World Cup — an obstacle that City had to overcome — and any clubs doing their due diligence a few weeks before the window opened would not have discovered that City were circling the wagons, because at that point, they were not.
Khusanov and Reis were both being monitored by some of City’s rivals (Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
It was not until the second week of December that City decided they needed big changes. Although they had lost four of their five matches in November, and signed Guardiola to a new contract, the club were sticking to the script: they would overhaul the squad in the summer.
That had been the intention since the end of last season, at least. They brought in Savinho and Ilkay Gundogan last summer in minor moves — one of the reasons why that net spend total is so healthy — and were fully prepared to keep the squad together for one more year.
Guardiola has said on record that he personally rejected the idea of making more signings in the summer. Japan striker Kyogo Furuhashi was one player that Guardiola decided City would not need, despite Alvarez’s departure. This month, Kyogo joined Rennes while City brought in Marmoush from Frankfurt — during negotiations, the Egyptian was shown Alvarez’s minutes and told that they are up for grabs.
That was another deal that was put in place quickly, because it became clear to City in December that they could not actually afford to wait.
There was optimism in the November international break, when Guardiola signed a new two-year contract, that players would soon return from injury and put a stop to what was at the time a run of three consecutive defeats.
The belief (or perhaps hope) was that players like Ruben Dias, John Stones and Jeremy Doku would return to action at the start of December and help patch things up.
It was not exactly a case of City turning a blind eye to their issues on the pitch, because they had identified the need for an energetic midfielder. That, combined with the return to fitness of their defenders, was expected to be enough to put things right.
But performances and results continued to slide and the injury situation got worse: Stones was forced off at half-time of the first game after the break, while Manuel Akanji and Nathan Ake both got injured during the rare bright spot of a 3-0 win over Nottingham Forest. Even now, Dias and Doku are on the sidelines again after setbacks and Stones is only just back after a second aborted return at the end of December.
John Stones has endured another injury-hit campaign (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
“The club decided to bring an extra player in the final third with the talent for scoring, assists, running and set-pieces,” Guardiola said of Marmoush last week. “Except with Aymeric Laporte (in 2018), we never used the winter transfer window. But it was an exceptional situation, we had to intervene to finish the season as good as possible.”
Although Guardiola has said bullishly that both Reis and Khusanov are ready to contribute right away when asked directly, he has been far more cautious when discussing their readiness at other times, and Khusanov would never have started against Chelsea had City’s injury situation in defence not been so dire — Akanji was the only centre-back fit to start ahead of that fixture.
City are firmly of the belief that they have secured two top talents for the future. The fact that they are both in Manchester with the team now is a sign of that. Bah, who signed from Valladolid, has been loaned to Lens (after Khusanov had left) and he is one of those signings where the club recognises his potential, but also that it is not necessarily enough to play for Guardiola’s first team.
Reis and Khusanov are different. The world’s leading clubs had been tracking Reis, while Khusanov — another player on Viana’s shortlist at Sporting — has the pace and aggression to be moulded into a top-class defender.
There is an expectation that the Uzbekistan international can contribute to some extent this season, which will help alleviate the strain on the club’s overworked central defenders, and provide some kind of cover for the departed Kyle Walker.
Khusanov endured a tough debut against Chelsea but is rated highly (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
The England right-back struggled massively in the first part of the season and, amid criticism from some supporters, felt that he could no longer cut it at City. Combined with a long-held desire to play abroad, he jumped at the chance to join Milan, especially having spoken to sporting director Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
Walker had conveyed his desire to leave City to Begiristain, which is something that disappointed Guardiola, as he felt that the two of them had such a good relationship that his captain could come to him with anything.
Walker has departed on a loan deal that includes an option to buy for less than £5m though there is currently no indication that Milan will make the move permanent. However, the statement posted to the 34-year-old’s social media channels suggest that he is not expecting to return to City for the final year of his contract.
In his absence, Dias has been promoted to second captain, behind Kevin De Bruyne.
(Carl Recine/Getty Images)
Another story of the window was that of James McAtee. The 22-year-old held talks with Begiristain during pre-season because he had interest from clubs in England and across Europe, but it was decided that he would stay, with Guardiola saying in pre-season that he had the quality to play with the first team.
However, despite the injuries, fatigue and deteriorating form of City’s midfielders and wingers, as well as the club’s own recognition that they needed to strengthen those areas, McAtee has not yet started a Premier League match.
Guardiola continues to say that McAtee is good enough to play for City, something that he has relayed in private, too, but so far actions have spoken louder than words.
Bayer Leverkusen made a loan offer for McAtee that included an option to buy for £25m, but under FIFA rules clubs are only permitted to loan out six players overseas, and City filled the last two spots with Walker and Bah. In any case, the club had no desire to let McAtee go. Despite agreeing that a move to Leverkusen would be ideal for him because he would be working under Xabi Alonso, playing a style that suits him at the top level of European football and alongside Florian Wirtz, the message was that he could not go because of the squad’s struggles with form and injuries.
McAtee’s situation attracted interest from a good chunk of the Premier League and most of Germany’s top six. Stuttgart, RB Leipzig, Frankfurt and Mainz all proposed loans, as did Italian side Fiorentina.
Nottingham Forest are big admirers but could not make a deal happen, while Tottenham were told by City that no senior players would be leaving. Chelsea, meanwhile, were put off by the idea that City would have wanted a similar fee to what Cole Palmer went for, if McAtee were to be sold at all.
McAtee stays, then, despite seeing City bring in another midfielder and a forward.
McAtee has had opportunities this season — but not many (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
Chelsea also tried to sign 19-year-old Nico O’Reilly late in the window, but City insisted on a buy-back, which the Londoners did not agree to. They already have former City academy graduates Palmer, Romeo Lavia and Tosin Adarabioyo, as well as Jadon Sancho on loan. The common thread is Joe Shields, City’s former head of academy recruitment, who knows the players well.
Jason Wilcox, former head of the City academy and now United’s technical director, is in the same boat and sources around City expect United to make similar moves to Chelsea in the coming years — they actually rivalled Chelsea for Tosin’s signature last summer.
City’s stance had indeed been that no senior players would leave, which meant that Galatasaray’s interest in Gundogan did not go far. Gundogan re-joined City from Barcelona in the summer but has been repeatedly called upon to play a role that he patently can no longer do. He also harbours genuine ambitions to join Guardiola’s coaching staff after retirement, something Guardiola is also keen on. When Gundogan signed in the summer, however, his deal included a clause that meant an extra year will be triggered if he plays 50 per cent of City’s matches. That milestone is now just a few games away.
One player that City pursued but could not bring in was Juventus’ versatile full-back Andrea Cambiaso. The Italian side were open to doing business this month but only for £66m, a number that City did not reach. That interest could be rekindled in the summer, when City plan to make several more significant additions to the squad.
Ironically, given they had initially only planned to sign a midfielder this winter, Gonzalez was the last player through the door. Douglas Luiz was another player strongly considered but City put a deal in place for Gonzalez, a former Barcelona youngster, over the course of the past few days.
But they clearly had to pay a premium for their desperation, having initially tried to negotiate well below the release clause.
“It was a difficult transfer to complete because his performances have been outstanding, and he has been such an important part of what FC Porto are doing this season,” Begiristain said of Gonzalez.
A message from Nico! 🩵👋 pic.twitter.com/VDbeFgJ1wG
— Manchester City (@ManCity) February 3, 2025
Frankfurt had also insisted that Marmoush would not be available in this window, just as Palmeiras wanted to keep Reis for their Club World Cup campaign, but City made sure they got both.
The fees that City have paid are comfortably within their means and are also in line with the type of money they have been spending in recent years. The two defenders have clearly been signed with the future in mind, too.
That suggests that City have kept a cool head over the past seven or eight weeks, acknowledging the necessity for an impact now but balancing it against the importance of making sure the players will actually be good enough to be part of the new squad they are building for Guardiola’s final years at the club.
The last-minute money spent on Gonzalez does suggest an element of panic regarding the area most in need of strengthening, and the late arrival hardly screams ‘first choice’, but if he is the answer to their short-term problems and is good enough to be part of their new era, it will be money well spent even if it was more than they intended to part with.
Normally, if a club holds out for a fee that City do not agree with, they will walk away, no matter how much they want a player. But this was not a normal window.
(Header photos: Getty Images)
