Manchester City beat Bournemouth 2-1 on Sunday with two late goals, and the more revealing detail was not the comeback but the team sheet. Enzo Maresca's first Premier League selection as City manager had Marc Guéhi, a centre-back, in the holding midfield role, alongside Elliot Anderson and Nico O'Reilly, a player Maresca has himself described as a left-back. Guéhi said he was surprised. So was everyone else.
The selection was a consequence of arithmetic. Rodri completed a move to Barcelona for £65.4m on 18 August, a four-year contract for the 30-year-old after City's attempts to extend his own ran out of road. Tijjani Reijnders left in the same week. Bernardo Silva has gone too. In one window City have removed the player who scored the only goal when they beat Inter in the 2023 Champions League final and won the Ballon d'Or the following year, plus two of the men who played beside him.
Replacing volume with volume
The replacement programme has not been shy. Anderson arrived from Nottingham Forest last month for £116m. On Sunday, while Guéhi was learning the position on the job, City agreed terms with Lille for Ayyoub Bouaddi: €95m guaranteed plus €5m in add-ons, a total of roughly £85.6m, taking the club's summer outlay to close to £200m. Two central midfielders account for nearly the whole window.