MANCHESTER CITY have torn up the transfer rules after the worst six months of Pep Guardiola's reign.
The reigning Premier League champions are on course to break their January spending record by more than £100 million – which is also an admission that they got it wrong last summer.
Any club in the world would have struggled to replace Ballon d'Or winner Rodri after he suffered a season-ending knee injury in September.
But the overall lack of investment in an aging squad is coming back to haunt City and has certainly cost them any chance of making it five titles in a row.
It is a mantra of sporting directors everywhere that the winter period is a bad time to sign players as it smacks of desperation and prices are inflated accordingly.
City in particular have made a habit of not going big in January over the past decade, spending over £20m on one player only twice to make an immediate impact.
Those exceptions to the rule were defender Aymeric Laporte, who was signed from Athletic Bilbao for £57 million in 2018, and striker Wilfried Bony, who joined from Swansea for £28 million in 2015.
City made a £14.1million splash for teenager Julian Alvarez in January 2022, but the Argentine was one for the future and remained on loan at River Plate for the rest of the season.
But Guardiola now needs reinforcements to give his team an immediate boost and to lay the foundations for their next winning team.
ABDUKODIR KHUSANOV
Khusanov, described by former colleagues as a “monster” and a “tank”, and known as The Train in his home country of Uzbekistan, has been tipped to become one of the best center halves in the world.
Khusanov, 20, was City's first signing when he joined from Lens for £33.6 million after just 31 appearances for the French club.
Khusanov has been included directly in Guardiola's squad and becomes the first player from Uzbekistan to play in the Premier League – the 118th different nationality to be represented.
Lens signed him for just £84,000 from Belarusian minnows Energetik-BGU after he was part of his country's historic victory in the Under-20 Asian Cup in March 2023 and played in the U20 World Cup later that year.
VITOR REIS
City have spent £29.6 million to land the right-footed teenage defender from Brazilian club Palmeiras.
And in a sign that Guardiola really wants to shake up his defensive options immediately, the Premier League champions have rejected Palmeiras' request to keep Reis on loan until the end of the season.
Like Khusanov, Reis has very limited first-team experience, having made just seventeen appearances for Palmeiras, but was named in the Brazilian League Team of the Year for 2024.
And the Brazil Under-17 international, who can play as a centre-back, right-back or even left-back, has been compared to Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea legend Thiago Silva.
OMAR MARMOUSH
The Egypt international is expected to be the most exciting arrival at the Etihad – and perhaps the most important, after Alvarez's summer sale to Atletico Madrid left City wanting in attack.
Liverpool and a number of other big European clubs have followed the Eintracht Frankfurt star after he backed up his breakout campaign of 2023/4 with a sparkling start to the current campaign.
Marmoush scored no fewer than twenty goals and fourteen assists in 26 games for Eintracht. With fifteen goals and ten assists in the Bundesliga alone, he was second in goal contributions in the top five European leagues, behind compatriot Mohamed Salah.
Marmoush has played mainly as a striker this season, but is also effective from the left and as a 10-second striker, giving City a whole host of new attacking options.
He is believed to be available for £67m but Frankfurt are under no pressure to sell after receiving £72m from PSG for Randal Kolo Muani in the summer.
ANDREA CAMBIASO
If City go ahead with a deal for the versatile Juventus defender, it will be a real statement of intent.
Juve are understood to have ruled out selling the Italy international, 24, in January unless they receive an offer they cannot refuse – which could mean something in the region of £67million.
Cambiaso is being touted as a ready-made replacement for Kyle Walker when the England right-back moves on, most likely to AC Milan, in the next two weeks.
But Cambiaso has mainly been deployed as a left-back this season and is more similar to former City star Joao Cancelo in his ability to play on either flank, in midfield and even as a winger.
Even if City decide not to pursue Cambiaso in January, they will spend more in a winter window than they ever have.
It is truly a season of change at Etihad, with director of football Txiki Begiristain leaving the club at the end of the season after 13 years of masterminding the transfer strategy.
Hugo Viana comes over from Sporting Lisbon this summer as a replacement for Begiristain.
But City and Guardiola couldn't wait that long to rebuild the great squad that brought unprecedented glory – until the recent extraordinary collapse.
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