Accusations of guilt at Man City: which clubs did the ‘inflated’ money flow to in the transfer market?

Manchester City’s spending power has undoubtedly changed the global football transfer market: their willingness to pay higher fees and wages has led to higher prices for everyone else too.

And once the world knows a club has an amount of money burning a hole in its pocket thanks to City, it can be difficult to spend it.

Asking prices can rise, and an influx of money doesn’t guarantee it will be well spent.

For many of the teams City have paid the most to during this period, the money has not been particularly beneficial.

Let’s take a look at some of the most interesting cases.

First of all, Wolfsburg. They immediately signed winger Julian Draxler for about half the amount received for Kevin de Bruyne in 2016, along with others including veteran defender Dante.

After losing De Bruyne, they fell from second to eighth place in the Bundesliga before narrowly avoiding relegation in the following two seasons.

And things haven’t gone particularly well for the second-highest ranked club, Monaco, either.

The most direct replacements they signed after the sales of Benjamin Mendy and Bernardo Silva that same summer to Manchester City – Terence Kongolo and Keita Balde – did not work out in the long term, and the team went from winning Ligue 1 and reaching the Champions League semi-final to near relegation within two years.

The club from which City purchased most players during the 2009-18 period – Arsenal (four) – did not mount a serious challenge for the Premier League title during that period.

Some clubs who did not receive payments from City could also claim that spending from their “inflated” accounts was jeopardizing their chances.

For example, Manchester City paid very similar amounts to Benfica and Porto at the time, but nothing to Sporting, the club that makes up the big three in Portugal.

Sporting failed to win a title between 2009 and 2018. There are several reasons for this, but could one of them be the fact that their direct rivals received money from City that might not have been offered if they had followed football’s financial rules?