MANCHESTER CITY have held the biggest summer sale in Premier League history this summer.
Pep Guardiola has already waved goodbye to 10 players during the window – and there could be more to follow.
Just four new faces have come in yet City are convinced they have not been weakened.
Once again they are viewed as the team to beat when the new season kicks off next weekend.
It has not exactly been a case of ‘Everything must go’ – but chairman Khaldoon al Mubarak has overseen the biggest clear-out the league has ever known.
Some £174million has been raked in already during the transfer window – which tops the £166m Chelsea raised five years ago.
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Add to that the £55m City will receive from Barcelona for Ferran Torres in a move that went through at the start of January.
That also makes it a British record for a calendar year – again beating the amount which poured into Chelsea’s coffers back in 2017.
And the kitty could still be boosted further before the end of the transfer window next month.
Young winger Samuel Edozie is likely to go – with Bayer Leverkusen among the clubs interested in the £10m-rated star.
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Meanwhile, full-back Issa Kabore is attracting plenty of attention – with Prem new-boys Nottingham Forest seeing a £8m bid turned down earlier this summer.
There could even be a windfall of around £5m if Jack Harrison’s mooted move to Newcastle goes through – due to a sell-on clause the champions have.
And Lazio are keen on signing young forward Ivan Ilic from Hellas Verona – which sees City trouser another £3m.
Amid all the outgoings, the champs have spent £96m in the window – on Erling Haaland and Kalvin Phillips.
Julian Alvarez is another new face but he arrived for £14m in January and was immediately loaned back to River Plate.
So the shelves are not exactly bare at the Etihad as they look for a fifth league title in six years.
Many of those who have gone are players who have been in the development squads at Etihad – and were unlikely to get into the first team reckoning.
But those figures might give Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp something to think about ahead of Saturday’s Community Shield at the King Power.
Ahead of last season, the Kop chief said he “did not understand” the spending by City – and said their budget appeared to have “no limits”.
Guardiola is delighted by the work which has been done behind the scenes this summer – and says it has been a very different window for the club.
He said: “So far I am so excited and so happy. Sometimes the market was strange for us.
“Normally we are a team that buy and didn’t sell much. This summer for different reasons, we sell some players.
“Sometimes you want to do it but you can’t. This summer it happened so quick. not just first-team players – academy and loan players.
“New players have come and we continue with them.”
Pep added he did not necessarily plan to sell the first team stars who have helped him achieve so much over the last six years.
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He said; “I was incredibly happy with Gabriel, Oleks and Raheem. If they stayed longer there would be no problem. They proved last year how good they are.
“But sometimes the players want more, and the club feel it is the right moment to do it.”
