Manchester City: Lack of Early Transfer Activity and the Champions League Effect

As a Manchester United fan accustomed to residing firmly in the shadow or our city rivals in the transfer market in the last few seasons, City’s temperance in the early stages of this season window is rather disconcerting.

To see United spend what is an estimated 55 million before Sheik Mansour has even picked up his chequebook doesn’t quite sit right. It is a stratospheric shift from last season, but the resonance of the move—or, more precisely, lack thereof—is that it alludes to a reality that City bashers the world over don’t want to admit.

Last season Man City spent because they had to in order to assert themselves on the elite level, they were a club in the ascendancy, shooting for the upper stratospheres. They had to move hard and fast in the window as, without Champions League football other clubs were quite often more attractive propositions.

Now, with their third-place finish in the EPL, and subsequent qualification to next seasons Champions League competition, no player (Lionel Messi and possibly Cristiano Ronaldo aside) is beyond them.

In such a situation a club is afforded the liberty of carefully selecting and cultivating their acquisitions, rather than recklessly spending on a lesser calibre of player.

When the ink does finally start to flow from Sheik Mansour’s pen it will be a new level of investment from what City fans have seen in the last three years. Manchester City have suddenly become one of the most tantalising employers in world football, after taking their seat at the top European table.

The rumours flying off the mill indicate a clear upgrade in the standard of players being linked with a move to Eastlands: Alexis Sanchez, Wesley Sneijder, Javier Pastore—Man City could not have attracted these players last season.

Such is the onus that is placed on Champions League football in today’s football community, that it is essentially opens all but the most immovable avenues (Messi); avenues that a club with City’s financial yield can exploit.

It was an inevitability that this year would come sooner rather than later, as success in football, before the financial fair play laws come in at least, can be bought. With the laws coming in for the start of the '12/'13 season this too signals clubs like City’s last opportunity to spend beyond their means; it promises to be quite a spectacle.

The most telling sign of City’s new-found attractiveness to the world’s top stars, however, comes with an apparent impending "mind-blowing" transfer for Cristiano Ronaldo, as reported in the Daily Mirror.

This, of course, is nothing new, City have for the last three years been linked with a plethora of the worlds top stars, yet before all overtures have been dismissed out of hand by stars obviously irked that "lowly" Man City have overstepped their station once more. Ronaldo, according to reports that will terrify fans the world over, has refused to dismiss the prospect of a move.

Yet 2011/12 could well signal the start of the sky blue era.