So Man City have signed Elliot Anderson for £116m. From Nottingham Forest.
Central midfielder, good player, stood out for a club that finished comfortably mid-table. At one stage during the haggling, the number on the table was £130m. They settled on £116m flat, no add-ons, and that’s now a club record – beating the £100m they paid for ‘our’ Jack Grealish back in 2021.
Think about that for a second, then look at what Moyes is having to do with this summer’s budget.
Same league, different rules
I have no issue with Anderson, per se. Good age, good World Cup tournament for England, fair enough if City want him that badly. What gets me is everything sits beneath it.
City have had 115 charges hanging over them from the Premier League since February 2023. The hearing wrapped up in December 2024. We’re now well into the summer of 2026 and there’s still no verdict.
City themselves were apparently “increasingly confident” that a decision was coming months back. Nothing’s landed. Three and a half years, charges covering nine seasons of alleged dodgy sponsorship deals and player payments, and in all that time, the club has carried on regardless.
They’ve kept on winning, kept on spending, and now they’ve just splashed £116m on a midfielder from Forest while the case against them sits wherever it’s sitting.
What Everton actually paid for their own mistakes
Everton, meanwhile, are still cleaning up after Moshiri. The stadium debt that needed refinancing through JP Morgan. The PSR mess that cost points, in front of our own fans, while we watched it happen live.
No three-year wait for a verdict – we got docked points the same season the charges were proven. Everton paid for it straight away, out in the open, where everyone could see. And still we pay … most recently with a £35m compensation bill from Burnley.
City are accused of breaking rules across nine years and the bill, if one ever arrives, turns up so late it won’t change anything. The titles are already won. The trophies are already in the cabinet. Whatever sanction lands at this point is basically meaningless. And if it’s a hefty fine … so what. Sheikh Mansour will sort it. One way or another.
That’s the bit that irks. Not that City have the money to spend £116m on a player – fair play if they can spend it while legitimately staying within PSR and SCR, or whatever. It’s that a club this size has been allowed to operate under a cloud for three and a half years with no real-world consequence, while a club like ours had the book thrown at us the moment we were found out.
This summer Moyes is working out who he can sell to fund who he can buy. City are working out which £100m+ midfielder fits Maresca’s first XI.
One of these clubs is still tidying up after its owners. The other is still waiting – three and a half years on – to even be told whether they did anything wrong. Or whether every single one of those 115 charges was unjust. mad, right?
Here’s the reporting on the Anderson fee, and here’s where the 115 charges case actually stands. Have a read and then tell me the Premier League is a level playing field.
