Why have Manchester City been so poor in the transfer market over the last three years?

For context, here are Manchester City's signings since the summer of 2012:

Jack Rodwell - £15 million
Scott Sinclair £8 million
Matija Nastasic - £12 million
Maicon -  £3 million
Richard Wright - Free
Javi Garcia - £16 million

Jesus Navas - £23 million
Fernandinho - £30 million
Alvaro Negredo - £21 million
Stevan Jovetic - £26 million
Martin Demichelis - £3.5 million

Bacary Sagna - Free
Fernando - £12 million
Willy Caballero - £6 million
Equilam Mangala -£32 million 
Wilfried  Bony - £28 million

All fees taken from http://www.transferleague.co.uk/premiership-transfers/manchester-city-transfers.html


Manchester City in the past three years have spent over 200 million pounds on talent for the football club and yet in that list, there are very few players who can be considered first team starters. The years previous to this, where Manchester City's stature in world football was considerably lower than it is currently, Manchester City brought in the likes of Vincent Kompany, Yaya Toure, Sergio Aguero, David Silva, Sami Nasri and more. It seems illogical that as Manchester City's stature has grown, as their reputation has improved, the quality of their signings has decreased.

Financially Manchester City can cope with any team in world football, they are regularly in the Champions League knock-out stages, they have won the Premier League two of the past three seasons and have one of the world's top managers in charge. Beyond that they have one of the best football stadiums in the world, some of the best facilities in Europe and their corporate staff are immensely successful. 

Yet Manchester City have now failed in six transfer windows to bring in the quality needed to dominate the Premier League as they should be doing or compete on a European level. Their squad is too reliant on the spine of the side in Kompany, Toure and Aguero, one of whom is past 30, another is becoming increasingly unreliable and the last is repeatedly injured. 

It is not a matter of targeting cheaper players, Bony cost slightly more than Dzeko did, David Silva cost £24 million the same as Navas and slightly less than Jovetic. Manchester City are still paying premium costs but are receiving less than premium players. Is this a failing of the scouting staff, world class players like Falcao, James Rodriguez, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Edison Cavani, Robin Van Persie, Luis Suarez have moved in recent years and yet for one reason or another no player of that quality has ended up at Manchester City.

Until Manchester City improve their transfer market dealings, it will be impossible for them to compete on a European level or even domestically dominate in the same fashion as Manchester United had done. It is unclear where the failings lie, whether Manchester City's scouting department isn't good enough and spotting talent, whether Manchester City are not showing players that they are the right move or the signings are good but Pellegrini is failing to integrate them properly, taking their promise into results in the same fashion as Kompany, Silva and Aguero were moulded from promising talents to world class players. It is absolutely crucial from a Manchester City perspective, that this discrepancy is dealt with.

city have had to reign in there spending due to FFP, they still have spent but 30 mil now wont get you the same player as they did when buying the likes of silva and aguero, i mean 50 mil for luiz in the current market!!

city then were the biggest spenders around willing to chuck both transfer fees and wages around, they simply aren't the top dog in that sense anymore wit the likes of psg, real madrid, barca all spending bigs amounts and massive wages on the top tier players


the majority of there wage bill is already taken up with those players you have mentioned, they simply cant go out and get another 300k a week player otherwise they'll be getting another rather juicy fine from uefa

yeah, they've messed up. to be fair, they've never actually signed top, top, top in demand players. silva was never wanted by madrid/barca, yaya was a barca cast off, aguero was quality & they got him but for ridiculous wages. kompany wasnt some world class centre back prior to city. they signed well, those players matured & improved, however, they've never been a club signing the very best. they blew all their money, maxed out on wage & won a league x2 & cup. when they went to push on, FFP killed them & stopped them dead in their tracks & they've been stuck in the mud going nowhere, especially in european performance. they should of signed younger, up & coming stars along the way to take over at some point from the ageing players in the squad. definitely been a scouting issue, but the managers will take the blame, no doubt. they really need a big overhaul in my opinion, players like nasri arent worth 150k or whatever he's on, paying sagna like 90k a week or whatever to warm the bench is embarrassing too. serious issues for them to fix.

With title winning sides you look to improve the squad but since 2011/2012 ain't been much improvement with Tevez/De Jong/Barry/Balotelli replaced by Negredo/Fernandinho/Fernando/Jovetic