Grading Manchester City's Activity in the Summer Transfer Window

If you're a regular follower of my articles, then you may remember that earlier in August I went through the 20 biggest clubs in Europe and graded each and every club's transfers in and out, before assigning a final overall grade.

Now that the transfer window has closed until January and most players have had the opportunity to play with their teammates or at least know where they fit in their new team's plans, I've decided to go back through all 20 clubs and assign new final grades on each club's transfer activity.

The format will be as follows: Starting September 1 and ending September 12, I will be publishing "report cards" for one of the teams I reviewed in August.

The schedule should look like this (and yes I'm aware that I'm off schedule):

September 1: Tottenham Hotspur

September 3: Arsenal

September 4: Liverpool 

September 5: Chelsea

September 6: Manchester City 

September 7: Manchester United

September 8: Juventus

September 9: AC Milan

September 10: Inter Milan

September 11: Real Madrid

September 12: FC Barcelona

Stay tuned and enjoy!

Transfers In: A

Transfers In: LB Gael Clichy, CB Stefan Savic, ST Sergio Aguero, AM Samir Nasri, DM Owen Hargreaves

Even for the richest of football clubs, spending money and spending money wisely can be two different things. Here, Manchester City deserve credit for doing the latter.

Despite their rather large transfer fees, Samir Nasri and Sergio Aguero have both looked like excellent additions to an already fearsomely loaded Manchester City squad, and the signing of Gael Clichy for only £7 million was undeniably one of the best value deals of the summer.

Stefan Savic was a slightly overpriced recruit in defense for Manchester City, but at only 20 years old the Serbian has plenty of time to prove himself worthy of his price tag.

Finally, Manchester City closed their summer transfer window in style with the signing of Owen Hargreaves on a free transfer. Assuming Hargreaves can overcome his injury problems, he should make for an excellent backup replacement for the retired Patrick Vieira.

Transfers Out: B

Transfers Out: FWD Felipe Caicedo, CM Patrick Viera (retired), CB Jerome Boateng, GK Shay Given, ST Jo, ST Craig Bellamy, RW Shaun Wright-Phillips.

Loaned Out: Michael Johnson, Emmanuel Adebayor, Dedryck Boyata, Roque Santa Cruz and Vladimir Weiss

There are many good things to be said about the way Manchester City has gone about offloading their extra players this summer.

For one, they have cut their wage budget down tremendously and were able to get rid many more deadweight players before the transfer deadline than I expected. A couple of players, like Nedum Onouha and Wayne Bridge, remain stuck in no-man's land at Manchester City, but the vast majority of players who were deemed surplus to requirements by Roberto Mancini have either been sold or loaned out.

However, there's no denying that Manchester City lost out on a lot of money in transfer fees this window, largely due to the nonsensical spending and ridiculously high transfer fees paid by their previous owners (as well as some of the nonsensical spending of the current owners).

First, ex-Manchester City striker Felipe Caicedo was sold to Levante for a measly €1 million, after being bought for seven times that figure. To make matters even crazier, Levante turned around and sold the Ecuadorian in the same summer for €7.5 million to Lokomotiv Moscow.

Then, second-choice goalkeeper Shay Given was sold for £3.5 million, half of what Manchester City had paid to sign him two seasons ago. That transfer was followed by the sale of Jo for practically nothing (the actual amount is unavailable on any website I know) after being bought from CSKA Moscow for £18 million.

Craig Bellamy left on deadline day for Liverpool on a free transfer after initially joining City for £14 million, and Shaun Wright-Phillips also left on deadline day for £4.5 million despite joining City for £8.5 million.

Many City fans will say that these players were signed by the old ownership or by Mark Hughes, but the fact of the matter is that Garry Cook, the under-fire CEO at Manchester City, was in charge of player acquisitions while all these players were brought to City, and remains so today (although he looks like he will likely have to step down soon).

Overall Grade: A-

Regardless of how poorly Manchester City has done in the business aspect of things with its sales this summer, the quality of the squad has been boosted tremendously with the club's acquisitons.

Furthermore, the squad as a whole is now more of a unit following the sale of the players Roberto Mancini was no longer interested in utlilizing.

For both of these feats, City deserve to be commended.

Despite the controversy that he sometimes brings upon himself with his comments and the haphazard nature in which he seems to select what players he wishes to see join Manchester City at times, there can be little doubt that Roberto Mancini knows what he's doing at Manchester City and is leading the team on a course to success.

It won't be easy to finish this season in even better standing than their last, but with Roberto Mancini as coach and a squad that can rival any squad in the world, anything is possible for Manchester City.

Thoughts?

What do you think?  Do you believe that the grades are too lenient on Manchester City? Maybe too harsh? 

Do you believe there are some players Manchester City should've pursued with greater intensity or players Chelsea has retained that should've been sold?

Also, I'd love to hear your predictions on where you think Manchester City will finish in the 2011-12 season based on their transfer acquisitions and sales.

I believe Manchester City look on course to finish second with the way they've gone about their transfer business this summer, just short of the title behind Manchester United. 

With Manchester City being in red-hot form though, I do believe there is an outside shot that they could nip Manchester United to the title, but I'm definitely not putting my money on it.

I look forward to hearing your opinions and reading your comments in the comments section below!