What are Manchester City’s key aims in the transfer market this summer?

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Manchester City are preparing to continue their squad overhaul by bringing in four or five new players this summer.

Having brought in two centre-backs, a holding midfielder and a versatile forward in January, City are looking to strengthen in other areas, with a goalkeeper, full-back and creative midfielders among the targets.

Progress has already been made towards bringing in some of their first choices and further meetings have been held this week to finalise their plans. A move for Nottingham Forest’s Morgan Gibbs-White is in the works, and there is keen interest in Bayer Leverkusen’s Florian Wirtz.

Incoming director of football Hugo Viana recently started work at City, with Txiki Begiristain set to leave the club after the Club World Cup. Viana had not officially begun his role in the January transfer window but he was involved in City’s dealings, and the club are now operating with two full-time transfer chiefs.

As well as adding quality to their squad, certain other requirements are being prioritised as they look to rebuild and return the team to its all-conquering ways. And despite spending £183million ($244m) in the January window, there is still plenty of capacity for further additions, as explained by The BookKeeper.

Here, The Athletic runs through some of the considerations behind City’s summer planning.

Hugo Viana has work to do in his first summer at the club (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)

Trimming the wage bill

With Kevin De Bruyne already confirmed to be leaving and several other senior players possibly following, City will be getting a lot of big wages off the books this summer.

Ederson and Bernardo Silva have been strongly linked with exits, although The Athletic understands that Ilkay Gundogan will remain at the club, an option for a second year having been triggered.

City do intend to bring in players to take the team forward but that does not mean that they will go big on reinvesting all of the money saved from high-profile departures. According to sources at the club, speaking anonymously to protect relationships, the plan is actually to trim the wage bill this summer.

The idea that City are looking to cut costs in this way may set alarm bells ringing among those in the fanbase who are hoping and expecting a major overhaul, but it does not mean that they are going to cut corners in their recruitment.

City are identifying players they believe can make a big impact who will not have demands on par with some of City’s biggest earners, which would only rule out the very top-level players in the world, ones that City would generally never target anyway.

After so long at City, players like De Bruyne and Ederson will all be on higher wages than most new players in their positions would reasonably expect to earn from their first major contract. Wirtz, for example, could command a big wage as one of the world’s hottest prospects, especially with interest from City, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, but that would surely not compare to the roughly £400,000 per week that De Bruyne earns currently.

Could both De Bruyne and Ederson depart City this summer? (Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)

City’s most recent accounts showed that their wages-to-turnover ratio dropped fractionally from 59 per cent to 58 per cent, and they want to continue in that direction going forward, with Erling Haaland’s nine-year contract bound to represent a large chunk of their salary outlay for several seasons.

‘Reliable’ players

Guardiola spent the winter saying that the only way for clubs, including his own, to survive the increasingly demanding schedule is to have a bigger squad, which would have represented a major departure from his long-time policy of having a small squad.

In the event, it turns out that he is probably not going to change tack at all. The plan, though it cannot be foolproof, is to look for ‘reliable’ players in terms of their availability, which presumably means — in most cases if not all — having a good injury record and a history of playing three games a week.

“I don’t like… I would say you have to have reliable players,” Guardiola said last month when asked about the bigger squad. “I would say that is more important. If you have Phils (Foden) and Ricos (Lewis) and Joskos (Gvardiol), in terms of not being injured… of course, you can have what happened with Rodri and Oscar (Bobb), but the guys who can play every three days, that is important.

“It’s not sustainable economically or even for the day-by-day for the manager and players, to have a lot of players who do not play. Of course you have to have a bigger squad but not huge, because what happens if you have a lot of players and you have no injuries in the season? In the last eight or nine years, we were incredibly stable in terms of injuries. Always, that’s so difficult as well.”

Gibbs-White, a player that City are trying to sign, does not have that track record of playing every three days but City’s firm interest in him goes to show that there can always be exceptions.

City have firm interest in Gibbs-White (Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)

The adaptation to playing that regularly should be borne in mind if and when he does sign, though; it was something that Jack Grealish had to adapt to in his first season and it still affects Jeremy Doku in his second season at City.

“Always with Jeremy there’s a little bit of doubt about his consistency playing every three days in terms of injuries, simple as that,” Guardiola said in March, a note of caution among some glowing praise for the Belgian winger.

Homegrown players

Homegrown rules could well come into play, but more so because of their impact on the Champions League squad.

Premier League rules say that a team can have no more than 17 overseas players, with the rest of the 25-man squad being made up of players who are homegrown (those who have been registered to an English or Welsh club for at least three consecutive years before they turn 21).

It is not that there has to be a minimum of homegrown players, just a maximum of overseas ones, and 17 is quite a high maximum considering Guardiola does not want a big squad anyway.

If City wanted a full squad of 25, then they would need eight homegrown players, but this season they only have 21 players registered with the Premier League anyway.

There is a minimum requirement for homegrown players in the Champions League, though, as UEFA regulations stipulate that each club must have at least eight homegrown players in the squad of 25. For every homegrown slot a club cannot fill, they are docked a squad place. This is where things look a bit tricky.

This season, City had six homegrown players registered to play in Europe, and 23 registered overall. Even with two fewer places, they did not have any problems, with youngsters like O’Reilly and Lewis (and many others) on the ‘B’ list of locally-trained under-21s supporting the cast.

(Carl Recine/Getty Images)

(The reason they had 23 in Europe and 21 in the Premier League is because Abdukodir Khusanov and Savinho are under 21 and did not have to be registered among the 25 to play in the Premier League, but did have to be for the Champions League.)

The short answer here is that City either need to keep hold of the vast majority of their current homegrown players, or replace all but one of them.

Their current homegrown players are Scott Carson, John Stones, Nathan Ake, Foden, Jack Grealish and James McAtee. Next season, Bobb will become a homegrown player as he will no longer be young enough to be on the U21/B lists, so he would ‘replace’ any existing homegrown player that leaves. If more than one leaves, they will need a direct homegrown replacement. (Bobb, incidentally, counts as homegrown, despite being from Norway, because he has been with the club since he was 16, in the same way Ake did at Chelsea at a similar age).

Given Guardiola’s desire for ‘reliable players’, there are question marks over Ake, Stones and Grealish, who have had injury-hit seasons both in 2024-25 and in the past. McAtee may also depart, given keen interest from, among others, Bayer Leverkusen and Forest.

To give an entirely hypothetical example of when the homegrown rules may come into play, let’s say that City sell five players this summer, including three homegrown. They replace them with five signings, let’s say four overseas players and one homegrown. They would have no problems in the Premier League as they currently have 15 overseas players and next year, hypothetically, that would rise to 16, still under the maximum of 17.

Scott Carson: still homegrown in 2025 (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)

City would still have a squad for UEFA containing 23 players but, in this example, only five would be homegrown. Therefore, they would be three short of UEFA’s minimum, so would only be able to register 22 of those players — and that’s not accounting for Vitor Reis, who was left out of City’s Champions League squad after arriving in January (when fellow new signings Omar Marmoush, Nico Gonzalez and Khusanov were selected as the three new additions to the squad that UEFA allows mid-season). If City wanted to add Reis in this hypothetical, another player would have to be left out.

Youngsters like O’Reilly and Lewis are still young enough that they will be classed as under-21 players anyway, meaning they would not be part of City’s 25 and would not count towards the homegrown quota, but can still be utilised in either competition.

Adding some experience

City brought in two young central defenders in Khusanov and Reis in January, with Khusanov initially playing far more than expected and Reis only starting FA Cup games against teams from a lower division.

Khusanov was 20 and had 18 months in the French league at the time he was signed, while Reis had only just turned 19. This summer, City are looking for far more top-level experience from their signings.

With players like De Bruyne and Ederson either confirmed to be on the way out or heavily expected to be, City recognise that they need to take as few risks as possible with their replacements, which is why they are expected to be looking at players who already play key roles at their club and have several years’ worth of experience under their belts.

(Header photos of Ederson and Florian Wirtz: Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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