Manchester City might have the most productive academy in football right now, but as Pep Guardiola’s side lurches from one defeat to another during an unprecedented slump, it is their “lost team” of Cole Palmer, Michael Olise, Morgan Rogers and so many more that is compounding the misery at the Etihad. Just as the club makes plans to raid the transfer market in January for expensive solutions to their growing problems, a reality is beginning to sink in that they had the answers all along, but decided to let them work for somebody else instead.
City, the first team in the history of English football to win a fourth successive title last season, have now lost nine of their past 12 games in all competitions. They sit in seventh position in the Premier League, 12 points behind leaders Liverpool — who have played one game fewer — and face a crucial UEFA Champions League clash against Paris Saint-Germain at Parc des Princes next month with elimination from the competition a real possibility.
As Guardiola attempts to find a route out of the worst run of his managerial career, his team is increasingly looking like a group of players who have run — and won — their race many times over. Ilkay Gündogan (34), Kevin De Bruyne (33), Kyle Walker (34), Bernardo Silva (30) and John Stones (30) are all beginning to show the signs of age catching up with them, while others are struggling for form.
And as Aston Villa forward Rogers sealed another City defeat by scoring the second goal in a 2-1 win for Unai Emery’s team at Villa Park on Saturday, the 22-year-old offered a painful reminder of what City have lost in recent years. Their world-class academy, which has a youngest cohort of 5-years-old and outperforms all of their Premier League rivals and arguably every major European team in terms of producing top-class players, has now started to work against the club precisely when it should have been providing the foundations for a new period of incredible success.
Rogers, like Chelsea forward Palmer, had his talent identified and honed at City’s academy as a youngster. So did, among others, Bayern Munich‘s Olise, Real Madrid‘s Brahim Díaz, Tottenham Hotspur‘s Pedro Porro, Ipswich Town forward Liam Delap, Barcelona‘s Eric García, Borussia Dortmund‘s Felix Nmecha and Palmer’s Stamford Bridge teammates Jadon Sancho, Romeo Lavia and Tosin Adarabioyo.
Defender Taylor Harwood-Bellis and goalkeeper James Trafford have also made rapid rises to the England team after leaving City for Southampton and Burnley, respectively.
All of the above emerged during Guardiola’s time as manager and moved on when it became clear that their prospects of first-team football would be better elsewhere.
Palmer, who has become one of the Premier League’s top players and a world-class talent at Chelsea, is the headline-grabbing “one that got away,” with Guardiola sanctioning the then-21-year-old’s £40 million exit in August 2023 because he could not satisfy the young forward’s appetite for regular football. The manager has since argued that he simply could not give Palmer what he wanted, with Silva, Jack Grealish, Phil Foden and Jérémy Doku all blocking his path to the team, but with 36 goals and 21 assists in 64 appearances for Chelsea, Palmer has shown time and again that City and Guardiola made a huge mistake by failing to find a way to keep him.
Rogers left City in the same summer as Palmer, moving to EFL Championship team Middlesbrough after loan spells at West Brom, Lincoln, AFC Bournemouth and Blackpool, yet within six months, he had done enough to earn a move to Villa for a fee of £8m rising to £15m, with City banking 25% of the transfer fee. Rogers is now a first-team regular at Villa and a senior England international, but Guardiola defended his decision to let him leave 18 months ago.
“It was a team that won the Treble,” Guardiola said of his squad that limited Rogers’ first-team opportunities. “Of course, everyone knows how good is Morgan, but in that age, at the moment, we have the players we have that allowed us to create the most successful eight years in football history.”
City can rightly point to their academy being an unrivalled success in the ten years since the club moved to the Etihad Campus and invested huge sums into the project. Producing their own talent was part of the blueprint laid out by City’s Abu Dhabi owners to ensure the club would eventually move away from expensive signings and develop their own.
According to Transfermarkt, City have generated £363m in transfer fees by offloading homegrow players since 2014, which is almost half their overall transfer income of £773m.
The profit on academy players is now beginning to look like a false economy, though. City have cashed in, but a smarter outlook could urged more patience with young players and allow them to develop and take the final step into the first team at the Etihad.
City have so much wealth that it has been too easy to sign a player from the top shelf and put them straight into the team rather than offering the likes of Palmer, Rogers, Lavia and others a patient pathway into the side. They lacked patience, or even worse, failed to spot the potential that others quickly developed elsewhere.
Sir Alex Ferguson ruthlessly moved on star players and title winners in the mid-1990s to ensure that Manchester United‘s Class of ’92 — David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and Gary and Phil Neville — had the space to grow into first-team stars. Ferguson and United were rewarded in 1999 with the Treble.
Liverpool have developed great young players during the Premier League era, including Steve McManaman, Robbie Fowler, Michael Owen, Steven Gerrard and Trent Alexander-Arnold, who were all allowed the time to establish themselves in the team.
Throughout the years, neither United or Liverpool were embarrassed by a young player who made it somewhere else. They kept their best youngsters and turned them into club greats.
City have taken a different route. Their youngsters have become victims of the club’s success, and Guardiola’s loyalty to his old stars is beginning to come at a heavy cost.
City need new blood to revive their team, but had they shown more patience with Palmer, Rogers, Lavia, Adarabioyo and Olise, they would not be searching for answers right now because the team’s future would already be secure.