Is a relatively quiet summer good or bad for City?

At the start of the summer most City fans would have felt that there wasn't much that needed to be done in the transfer window. A new centre back (especially as Joleon Lescott was out of contract and leaving), and some depth added in the centre of midfield were the priorities. Aside from that, there may be a need for new signings but only if they were a replacement and upgrade for someone leaving.

So far the summer has fitted the above. The biggest signing so far is Fernando. This adds strength in the centre of midfield behind (or alongside?) Yaya Toure and Fernandinho. Additionally there is the signing of Bruno Zuculini, a midfielder from River Plate. The latter signing is one I'll confess to knowing little about. At 21 and only costing £1.5million, he may be one for the future. But at that age that should come soon, so I'm a little puzzled by that.

The signing of Bacary Sagna looks like a replacement and upgrade on Micah Richards. Sadly Micah has been injured for most of the last couple of years and has looked a shadow of the player he once was when he has played. This looks a sensible move all round as perhaps a change of club would help Micah re-discover his form of a few years ago. But Micah Richards is still at City. Is the intention still to move him on? Or did the FFP punishment from UEFA and the restrictions on the squad size (and need for homegrown players in the squad) change City's mind about letting him go?

The one signing which is an obvious upgrade is Willy Caballero. With Costel Pantillimon leaving, the probable back-up keeper is much better than before.

But what of players leaving? As the season ended there were two worrying stories that emerged. Firstly there was the ridiculous stories around Yaya Toure. To me, this always looked like an agent stirring things up to try and engineer a better deal or move for the player. Thankfully this appears to be resolved. The other story was that James Milner wanted to leave. Little more has been heard about this which isn't that surprising. Milner always strikes me as someone who will do something in the correct, 'boring' way. If the story is true, he would probably have let the club know as soon as the season was over and then everything would have happened behind closed doors. In this case, it's likely no news will be heard unless there is a transfer. I hope that we keep hearing nothing about this.

Finally, what is left to be done? The obvious one is that so far there has been no central defender coming in. The rumoured signing of Eliaquim Mangala has been just that, rumoured, for months now. If this does go through then on the face of it, City would have done all they 'need' to do. But I do think there is more to be done. There are a number of players in the squad who are perhaps now surplus to requirements. Scott Sinclair and Jack Rodwell are two who spring to mind. In the case of Sinclair, after an underwhelming first season at City he spent all last season on loan at West Brom where he played only 6 games. In Rodwell's case he is now 5th choice in the centre of midfield. Would it be a good move to sell both of these?

So has this been good or bad for City? If, in what is left of the transfer window, a quality centre back arrives and a couple of fringe players leave (either permanently or on long term loans) then I would argue it will have been good. If no centre back arrives then I would be a little worried. There are some out there arguing that City are repeating mistakes made two years ago. True there has not yet been a world class signing but this misses the point. Two years ago City were 2 1/2 years into Mancini's reign as manager. This side is a year into Pellegrini's reign and is still developing. At times last year this was obvious. Two years ago many of the signings came right at the end of the transfer window, too late to be part of pre-season and it felt like they were not first choices. This year City have been active early and appear to have done a lot of their business already. This is a sign that targets have been identified and signed, unlike 2 years ago. If the remaining business is done in the same low-key manner, this will not be a sign of mistakes, it will be a sign of a club knowing what they want and getting it done.

The Transfer Window so far....

Now we are almost half-way through the (official) transfer window and City have made several signings, it seems a good time to assess the changes made. There is a good assessment here, although it does lose some credibility by suggesting that Kolorov would start at right back if the season started today. Here are my thoughts.

Firstly, there have been the following transfers out

• Wayne Bridge, Kolo Toure, Carlos Tevez, Roque Santa Cruz, Maicon

Along with the release or sale of some academy players who hadn't made the first team (e.g. Ryan McGivern, Jeremy Helan), the departures of Wayne Bridge and Roque Santa Cruz are not significant from a first team point of view. Both were clearly not wanted having not played a league game for City in more than two years, The main impact of their departure is to reduce the wage bill.

Kolo Toure's departure may be in a similar category. It is likely that he was earning large wages and as fourth choice centre back there is probably better value to be gained from replacing him.

The only two players sold so far are Maicon and Tevez. Maicon was always a puzzling signing. I was never sure why we'd signed another right-back when we already had two excellent ones in Micah Richards and Pablo Zabeleta. He was possibly bought for Mancini with a view to using him as a wing-back in the back-3 system that was tried early last season. A combination of the excellent form of Zabeleta, injuries and the fact that the back-3 was largely unsuccessful, meant Maicon didn't have a successful season and so this sale makes sense.

The sale of Carlos Tevez makes sense from a financial perspective, although it would have been good to keep him in the team as he's a genuinely world-class player. Unfortunately in football today, once a player enters the final year of their contract their value diminishes rapidly. Most clubs don't let players enter the final year of their contract without either trying to negotiate a new contract or attempting to sell the player. Given the high wages Tevez was on, selling him was a sensible move financially.

The net result of the above is that we have reduced the wage bill significantly, but need to replace a central defender and a striker (I don't believe Maicon needs replacing as we have two right backs in the squad already). Added to the above should probably be Mario Ballotelli. While he was sold in January, he wasn't replaced. So if we were to keep a similar balance to the squad we should be looking for a central defender and two strikers.

The transfers in so far are

• Jesus Navas, Fernandinho, Stefan Jovetic, Alvaro Negredo

All of the above are excellent players, and all are internationals. Individually they look good signings. But I'm more interested in how they fit into the first team squad. Firstly, we have signed two strikers, a winger and a midfielder. Given the needs based on who was sold, we still need a central defender and didn't need the winger or midfielder. However, that ignores a couple of basic questions: what were the existing weaknesses in the squad, and how does the squad need to evolve in order to play the tactics the new manager will use?

One of the most glaring weaknesses in the team last season was a lack of width. The nominal wide players such as Silva and Nasri like to drift inside and get involved in central areas. Overlapping full-backs were supposed to provide some width, but the majority of the team was very narrow. During the Championship winning 2011-12 season, Adam Johnson often came off the bench to change things and provide width. Last season he was replaced with Scott Sinclair, but he had a poor season making little impact. The signing of Jesus Navas, a winger with genuine pace, should address this weakness.

Fernandinho may address another weakness in the squad, the lack of cover for Yaya Toure. The other midfielders are just not the same type of player as Yaya and we have missed him when he's been absent. But I'm not sure we are wise paying £30million for a back-up midfielder. This transfer, and the absence of a new centre back, may be a clue as to how the team will evolve tactically.

It has been widely rumoured that the director of football, Txiki Begiristan, wishes to implement a 4-3-3 system similar to that used when he was at Barcelona. If this were the case, then by playing with 3 midfielders instead of 2 (in the 4-2-3-1 system used last season) means more players are needed in this area. However, another feature of the Barcelona team in recent years has been defensive midfielders playing as a ball-playing centre back. This has usually been Mascherano, although others have played there as well. Could Javier Garcia starting the first pre-season friendly at centre-back be a sign of this? If so, then it wasn't a centre back that was needed to replace Kolo Toure, it was a midfielder.

Of course, all the above could be missing key information, and ignores any academy players who may join the squad. There could well be further transfers in and out. Manuel Pellegrini hasn't been at the club long and so may want to make further changes when he has assessed the squad. But if this turns out to be all the transfers we do then it looks to have been a good transfer window. Players leaving have been replaced, obvious weaknesses in the squad have been addressed and it is likely the overall wage bill will have been reduced as well.

Why Falcao was never moving to the Premier League

In an excellent article by Michael Berlin on Grantland, there is a good description of the strange background to Falcao's move to Monaco. It is essentially a story about the third-party ownership of players and how it impacts the players career. For me a small detail within the story stood out. In a section describing how the club Falcao was transferred to was chosen is the following:

"There are only a few potential buyers ....... Manchester City, Chelsea, and even United are out because ....... the Premier League doesn't allow for the transfer of third-party owned players."

While playing for Atlético Madrid, Falcao was part owned by the club, and part owned by a company called Doyen Sports. Under Premier League rules, if Falcao was to move to a club in the Premier League then the club would have to fully own him. Part ownership, with the rest owned by a third party, is banned.

I'm not going to go into the details of why it's banned here (the article covers many of the issues) but the press have been covering rumours of Falcao being signed by a Premier League club for months (see here and here for example) without ever once mentioning the fact he was part-owned by a third party, as far as I can recall.

This is a huge piece of information to leave out of the story as it has a huge impact on any potential transfer. The third-party interest in the player is there to make money. As the article explains in more detail, young players are funded early in their career as an investment and the third-party then looks to make money over the course of the career as the player becomes more successful. One way this happens is through lucrative transfers.

If the player was to move to a Premier League club then the third-party would have to sell their stake in the player. Doing so, they would be giving up all future returns on their investment. Even if they were willing to do so, the least they would do is demand a much higher transfer fee from a Premier League club than from a club that allowed them to retain their involvement. This would be to compensate them for future earnings they would be giving up.

The effect of this is to make players who have third-party involvement either off-limits, or considerably more expensive for Premier League clubs. Yet from the press reports over the last few months you would not have guessed that Falcao was subject to this restriction and given how common the practise is in certain parts of the world, gives me another reason to doubt the accuracy of transfer rumours reported in the press.