The insane XI Man City could’ve signed for less than their £900m financial schemes

Manchester City‘s financial case has produced plenty of eye-watering numbers, but few jump off the page quite like £900million.

The Premier League says an independent commission found schemes at Manchester City had “artificially inflated the club’s revenues, and reduced its costs, by more than £900million”.

How do you even begin to put that figure into context? Transfer fees are as good a place as any, so we had the brainwave to put together this XI of players City could’ve signed between 2009-10 and 2017-18.

Ignoring wages and taking a few liberties, we’ve assembled an absurd XI from the biggest and best transfers of the era – and still haven’t managed to spend £900million.

City did more than alright with Ederson, but we all know which Brazilian goalkeeper we’d rather have between the sticks. Alisson has been operating at an absurdly high level for the best part of a decade.

Liverpool broke the bank to sign him from Roma for £66million and were rewarded handsomely. He immediately solved a problem position and became a cornerstone of the side that went toe-to-toe with City at their absolute peak.

The timeline gets a little awkward here, because this deal was completed in the summer that City apparently (cough) started doing everything by the book. Close enough, though. We’re having it.

You always get one or two issues and outliers when you cobble together these XIs. Here’s the obligatory sore thumb in this team, but bear with us because the rest of this line-up is Teflon.

City themselves couldn’t really have done much better than they did in reality. Kyle Walker cost £45million in 2017 and went on to make over 300 appearances and lift 18 major trophies.

Elsewhere, they had Kieran Trippier, Joao Cancelo and Danilo on their books at various points, while they won’t exactly look at the hefty fees spent on Alvaro Odriozola, Nelson Semedo or Serge Aurier with much envy.

So we’re cheating slightly with Young, who was still very much a winger when Manchester United signed him from Aston Villa for £17million in 2011.

But he was exactly the kind of signing City were making as they built their empire in those early years of Abu Dhabi ownership: peak age, Premier League-proven and available from a club that had been above them in the footballing food chain before the takeover.

It’s not difficult to imagine City making that move instead.

No-brainer.

Liverpool were the one side capable of properly disrupting City’s domestic dominance during this period. In hindsight, City could’ve saved themselves an awful lot of trouble by signing the players that transformed Jurgen Klopp’s nearly-men into champions.

Pep Guardiola has been blessed with some fine – and outrageously expensive – centre-backs, but none of them can hold a candle to Big Virg when it comes to Premier League all-timer conversations.

Looked at through the lens of today’s transfer market, £27million for a teenage prodigy like Marquinhos was an absolute steal.

The Brazilian has won no fewer than 11 Ligue 1 titles and captained PSG to back-to-back Champions Leagues.

He’s still one of the best centre-backs in the world and surely one of the greatest signings of the modern era.

Luke Shaw’s £27million move to Manchester United would’ve worked better for the money angle. But for all his quality, his decade at Old Trafford hasn’t exactly left City wondering what might’ve been.

For a genuinely world-class option, we can’t look past Alba. £11million was a bargain even in 2012, and City would’ve surely loved him in his prime. Unfortunately for them, a return to his boyhood club Barcelona always felt inevitable.

The France international had just been instrumental in the greatest title triumph in Premier League history. That Chelsea were able to pick him up for £32million without the mother of all bidding wars remains absolutely baffling.

He immediately proved the point, becoming the first player to win successive Premier League titles with different clubs.

Five years later, he was Chelsea’s outstanding performer throughout the Champions League knockouts, including a monstrous display against City in the final. We all loved him.

We don’t need to explain to explain this one, do we?

Quite simply one of the greatest midfielders of all time.

The sensible choice would be Toni Kroos. He cost Real Madrid just £20million in 2014, formed an era-defining partnership with Modric and won five Champions Leagues alongside him. Ridiculous business.

But value isn’t really the spirit of this flashy superstar XI. Pogba was one of the superstar transfers of the era: magnificent at Juventus, courted by Europe’s elite and eventually signed by Manchester United for a world-record fee in 2016.

He’s still United’s record signing a decade later. We can’t not have him. Sorry, Toni.

For all the astronomical fees elsewhere in this XI, Salah cost Liverpool just £34million. Somehow that was a club-record transfer back in 2017. How times change.

The Egyptian King scored 191 Premier League goals for the Reds, lifting four Golden Boots, and became one of the defining players of the Guardiola-Klopp era.

Imagine dropping that level of firepower into Guardiola’s City while simultaneously denying Klopp his greatest goalscorer. It would’ve been a cakewalk.

Even in today’s hyperinflated transfer market, it’s difficult to imagine anyone getting close to the head-spinning €222million (£198million) PSG paid to trigger Neymar’s Barcelona release clause in 2017.

Or, to put it another way, less than a quarter of the £900million City are alleged to have artificially inflated their revenue by. Yikes.

Neymar to PSG was the seismic transfer of the 2010s. Ronaldo finally leaving Manchester United for Real Madrid was the previous decade’s equivalent.

There was obviously no universe in which United were selling him across town, and the Bernabeu had always felt like his destiny.

Still, the world-record £80million fee they paid in 2009 – the summer City allegedly began cooking the books – would’ve barely made a dent in the pockets of their new owners.

That’s enough left over to have Luis Suarez (£75million), Gareth Bale (£85million), Toni Kroos (£20million) and Kaka (£56million) warming the bench.

Easy money.