Man City record transfer window: £458m spent, so who backs up Erling Haaland?

By Jack Shaw · Manchester · Published: 11:30 BST

• Manchester City spent £458m this summer — a new Premier League record for a single window, according to BBC Sport.
• The club transfer record was broken twice: Elliot Anderson for £116m, then Enzo Fernández for a joint-British record £125m.
• Rodri, Bernardo Silva, Tijjani Reijnders and Nico González all left — and BBC Sport asks whether City have left themselves without a back-up to Erling Haaland.

The Man City record transfer window closed at £458m, the biggest single-window outlay in Premier League history, and it bought Enzo Maresca an almost entirely new midfield. It did not buy him a striker. As BBC Sport’s Manchester City reporter puts it, the obvious question left hanging over all that spending is whether City have actually left themselves without a back-up to Erling Haaland.

What the Man City record transfer window actually delivered

Maresca, who replaced Pep Guardiola, got the full backing of director of football Hugo Viana in his first window in charge. City broke their transfer record twice: £116m on Elliot Anderson from Nottingham Forest, then a joint-British record £125m on Enzo Fernández, the man who captained Maresca’s Chelsea side. Morocco international Ayyoub Bouaddi, 18, arrived for £86m. That trio alone accounts for £327m.

Out went captain Bernardo Silva, 2024 Ballon d’Or winner Rodri, Tijjani Reijnders and Nico González — the midfield gutted and rebuilt in one go. It is the end point of a rebuild BBC Sport traces back to January 2025: just four players remain from the starting eleven and bench that beat Inter Milan in Istanbul to win the 2023 Champions League. We covered the Fernández negotiation as it went to the wire; for the full chronological timeline of the window across the league, see the running coverage on the JOE sport hub, and the Forest side of the Anderson sale on nottinghamforest.football.

The expert angle: a record window with a nine-shaped hole

City have solved a problem they created this summer and left alone one they already had. Senior club sources are, per BBC Sport, delighted with the business, and on paper they should be: Maresca now has two established players in almost every position, with January’s early moves for Antoine Semenyo and Marc Guehi already banked. City believe the squad is stronger than it was at the start of last season.

“Almost every position” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Omar Marmoush, the forward you would expect to cover a Haaland absence, left for Tottenham on loan with a £60m obligation to buy and was not replaced. So the contingency for a Haaland injury looks like pushing someone forward out of position — and none of the three players City just spent £327m on has ever been a centre-forward.

That feeds the second question BBC Sport raises and nobody has answered yet: how do the new midfielders actually fit together? Fernández arrives to play for a manager who knows exactly what he wants from him. Anderson, at £116m, did not cost that to be a rotation option, and Bouaddi’s fee says the same. Three midfielders, one midfield, and a manager in his first season at the club.

The counter-argument is straightforward. Haaland has started the season scoring — twice in the 4-1 win at Crystal Palace — and a squad this deep can absorb the odd absence elsewhere. City are, in effect, betting on his fitness. Would you take that bet with a Premier League title riding on it?

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