Manchester City Guilty Charges: Which Clubs Benefited from 'Inflated' Transfer Fees?
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Which clubs did Man City's 'inflated' money flow to in the transfer market?
Image source: Getty Images
Image caption: The previous clubs of Sergio Aguero, Kevin de Bruyne, and Bernardo Silva all received significant transfer fees from Manchester City during their era of financial rule-breaking.
By Daniel Austin, BBC Sport senior journalist
Published 16 minutes ago
The money flowed around football. It made a lot of other clubs richer. It helped teams everywhere, especially in the Premier League.
These have been some of the arguments used by those backing Manchester City in the media and online since the verdicts declaring the club guilty came in and an appeal was announced.
The suggestion is that there was a net benefit to the game as a whole, and in particular, the clubs to whom Manchester City paid big transfer fees.
The more than £900m by which the independent commission found the club had "inflated" its accounts was not all spent on transfer fees. Clubs have various expenses, including player and staff wages, utilities, insurance, infrastructure costs, commercial fees, and more.
But the roughly £1.2bn Man City spent on players between 2009-2018 (about £900m net spend) was more than any other club in that period.
That outlay was vital in making them England's most successful club, and would surely have been significantly reduced had they not knowingly broken the rules, as the independent commission concluded.
So where did City's money flow to in the transfer market, and what impact did it have?
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Who did Man City pay most money to between 2009 and 2018?
Football transfers involve numerous costs, including the player's transfer fee, agent fees, legal expenses, administration costs, and potential signing-on bonuses.
The following list showcases every club to whom Manchester City paid transfer fees during the specified timeframe, sorted in descending order from the highest to the lowest amounts received:
- [List of 46 clubs from 19 national league systems, with details on transfer fees received from Man City.]
This list demonstrates the extensive reach of Manchester City's transfer spending, spanning various European leagues. While a quarter of their total transfer outlay was directed towards Premier League clubs, the distribution was relatively even across top-tier leagues in Europe.