Which Clubs Have Been Most Harmed by Manchester City?

On an April afternoon in 2026, at Liverpool's Melwood training ground, I stood outside the fence and watched Jürgen Klopp. He said nothing throughout the session. His team had just recorded 97 points the previous season, a tally that in most decades would be an absolute championship. But they still finished second behind Manchester City. I noted in my notebook: this is not a failure. This is the migration of a standard.

When the 2026/24 Premier League season ended, the question became clearer than ever: what had Manchester City taken from their rivals? This debate is not new, but how we read it is often governed by emotion rather than data. Man City under Pep Guardiola established a dominant era spanning from the 2026/17 season to the present, with four consecutive Premier League titles between 2026 and 2026 and six in eight seasons. But the damage they inflicted is not measured solely by the points their rivals dropped. It is measured by the fates of the players transferred to the Etihad, those who left their parent clubs to become part of a winning system.

The story began long before the Guardiola era. In the summer of 2026, Gareth Barry left Aston Villa for Manchester City for £12 million. A year later, James Milner did the same for £26 million. Both were pillars of Villa, a club then competing for European places. After losing their two most important central midfielders in consecutive seasons, Villa spiraled. They finished 9th in 2026/11, then 16th, and by 2026 were relegated with just 17 points. It was one of the fastest collapses in Premier League history. Of course, not all blame can be assigned to Man City, but losing two key players to a direct rival is not a minor variable. It is a systemic shock.

In London, Arsenal suffered a similar fate, but in a more complex way. In 2026, they let Emmanuel Adebayor and Kolo Touré go to Man City. In 2026, Gaël Clichy and Samir Nasri followed. Four first-team players were stripped by the same rival within two years. But Arsenal are also the only club on this list to have received something from Man City: Mikel Arteta. In 2026, Arteta retired at City and returned to Arsenal as an assistant coach, before becoming head coach in 2026. This is a rare reverse flow in an almost one-way system. If we calculate net talent flow, Arsenal may not be as harmed as the 10th place in this emotional ranking suggests. That is why I always distrust rankings built on mixed criteria without weighting.

Tottenham is a painful case in a different way. In 2026, Kyle Walker left Spurs for Man City for £50 million, a world record for a defender at the time. Walker was not just a full-back. He was one of the fastest recovery players in the Premier League, capable of playing as a wing-back in Guardiola's system. When Walker left, Spurs lost their ability to transition from defence to attack in an instant. They still reached the 2026 Champions League final, but that was the last peak of a cycle. After that came the departure of Mauricio Pochettino, the decline of Christian Eriksen, and a string of irreproducible seasons. One player cannot explain the entire collapse, but he was the first brick removed from the wall.

The key point that most analyses miss is this: Manchester City did not just win by beating rivals on the pitch. They won by buying out their rivals' futures. That is a structural damage mechanism, not the result of a single match. Liverpool are the clearest victims in terms of points: two runner-up finishes with 97 points (2026/19) and 92 points (2026/22), both just 1 point behind Man City. In most Premier League seasons in history, 97 points would be enough to win the title. But not in this era. The gap between Liverpool and third place in those two seasons was 25 and 18 points respectively. That means the Premier League had been split into two distinct tiers: Man City and Liverpool at the top, the rest below. City's dominance did not just take the title from Liverpool. It reshaped the entire competitive structure of the league.

Everton is another case worth analysing separately. They sold Joleon Lescott to Man City in 2026, Jack Rodwell in 2026, and John Stones in 2026. Three centre-backs in seven years, all to the same destination. Everton did not immediately get relegated, but they gradually lost their ability to compete for European places. They became a mid-table team, then a relegation-fighting team. It was a silent decline, with no single clear tragic moment, but it was one of the longest-lasting damages. Similarly, Leicester City let Riyad Mahrez go to Man City in 2026 for £60 million. Mahrez was a key factor in the historic 2026 title. After he left, Leicester retained a European-place position for a few seasons, but never recaptured the feeling of a team capable of producing a surprise.

There is an uncomfortable truth that emotional rankings rarely admit: Manchester United may be the most damaged club symbolically, but not in terms of data. When Man City became a force, United lost their sole dominance in Manchester. They lost the aura of a club every young player dreamed of joining. But between 2026 and 2026, United still spent hundreds of millions each season. They were not losing players to Man City in the way Spurs or Villa experienced. United's damage was to prestige and status, not to player assets. That is a different type of harm, and placing it on the same ranking as points-based harm is a methodological error.

What is notable is that Manchester City did all of this within the framework of transfer rules. There is no evidence that their player purchases violated regulations at the time. Their financial power, derived from Abu Dhabi ownership, allowed them to pay fees no other club could match. But that power also raises questions about the sustainability of competition. If one club can continuously buy the best players from direct rivals, competition is no longer about tactics. It becomes about ability to pay. And that game has only one winner.

When football stops rolling, I begin to hear the breathing of data. And the data tells me that the greatest damage Man City inflicted was not the lost titles. It was the players who never got the chance to develop at their former clubs, the teams that never got the chance to build a complete winning cycle, and a league split into two tiers where the top tier truly has only one club. Would Liverpool have won two more titles without Man City? Possibly. Would Aston Villa have stayed up if they had kept Barry and Milner? Possibly. But those questions have no answers. They only have one lesson: in modern football, the winner does not just score more goals. They also buy more futures.