Liam Delap and Cole Palmer have shown Manchester City is now the place to be for player development

Manchester City continue to go heavy in the transfer market - £123million spent in the summer transfer market so far.

But amid the vast transfer sums, there's a quiet recruitment revolution unraveling behind the scenes at the Etihad Stadium.

The wealth is there of course, this week's signing of Ruben Dias from Benfica for £64million indicative of that point. That's unlikely to change, either.

But just recently there's been a noticeable sprouting of the fledgling talent that lies under the surface: the recent emergence of Liam Delap and Cole Palmer a case in point.

Having scored on his senior debut in the EFL Cup against Bournemouth last week, Pep Guardiola handed 17-year-old Delap his first Premier League appearance in the defeat to Leicester on Sunday.

There was a time when Delap wouldn't have made it to City, or not even considered going there amid genuine concerns of a pathway into the first-team.

At the end of the day, that was partly why Jadon Sancho left for Borussia Dortmund, or more recently why Jamie Bynoe-Gittens departed for the same club earlier this summer.

But things are changing. For many young players City is now the place to be for player development.

Much like Chelsea has been for the past decade, the country's best youngsters are flocking to City.

The concept of academy recruitment is fast becoming an integral piece of the club's long-term vision.

The capture of Delap from Derby in the summer of 2019 is illustrative of the club's dedication to attracting England's best teenagers.

City were playing Derby's under-16's and Delap stuck out like a sore thumb. From that moment recruitment gurus Stewart Thompson and Sam Fagbemi kept close tabs on the youngster.

Not long later Delap was signing for City; a year later he was making his first-team debut.

Thompson, chief youth scout, and Fagbemi, head of national scouting, have helped remodel the club's academy scouting strategy reporting into famed head of youth recruitment and talent pathways Joe Shields - the man credited for bringing Sancho to City.

Fagbemi and Shields were both targeted by Arsenal last season as the north London club reshuffled their academy recruitment department - but City managed to keep hold of both.

And the Etihad club continue to bolster their UK scouting network, recently appointing Carl Walker in the role of lead southern scout; taking the recruitment specialist from West Ham and Paul McLaren heading up northern sector youth scouting.

Delap and Cole's promotion should merely be the tip of the iceberg.

Behind them are the likes of Kane Taylor, who was signed from Aston Villa last year, Dan Ogwuru, taken from Bolton, and Ben Knight, who was previously on Ipswich's books, to name just three who are tipped to make the breakthrough.