Manchester City have moved on a whole team of players in their academy this year and are delighted to see their progress
Mahamadou Sangare of Manchester City celebrates scoring the opening goal for his team during the Vertu Trophy match between Rotherham United and Manchester City U21 at AESSEAL New York Stadium on October 28, 2025
Manchester City have a talented group of youngsters coming through the ranks at the Etihad
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Loaned. Loaned. Loaned. Sold. Loaned. Loaned. Loaned. Sold. Loaned. Sold. Loaned. It looks boring and it sounds boring, but it means a lot to Manchester City's academy.
Ben Wilkinson's Under-21s beat Birmingham last week to continue their charge up the Premier League 2 table. Six points off top spot with a game in hand, they will be strong contenders to retain the title they won last season when the play-offs begin again.
Win or lose, what matters more to City is that almost all of the squad that beat Southampton in last year's final are no longer at the club. You can make a full XI out of academy players that have now moved, either on loan or permanently, to play senior football elsewhere as City build on their reputation for producing young players capable of starting their careers confidently.
Alternatively, you can just see wonder goals pop up on your social media feed and note how wide the network of City graduates is spreading. Shea Charles scored a worldie last weekend for Southampton a few years after his City debut, and Emilio Lawrence's first goal in senior football was a brilliant one for Luton.
"We have to adapt to the players we have year-on-year and it's a very different group to last year. It's really pleasing now that the team that played in the play-offs last year, every single one is now not with us so they've moved on quickly," Under-21s coach Ben Wilkinson told the Manchester Evening News. "It's very rare for a 21s team to move a whole team on and that's something we're really proud of."
It's to the credit of the City academy that the new group in the Under-21s are pushing for more silverware. They have won seven league games in a row and have scored the most and conceded the fewest in the division, hitting form at exactly the right time ahead of the play-offs at the end of the season.
Not only can they boast about moving players on though but youngsters can actually see it. They know that they will get an opportunity to move if they pay attention to what is needed while they are at the City Football Academy, and they can look at Jahmai-Simpson-Pusey, Oli Whatmuff or Divine Mukasa and see that those players are thriving at other clubs.
Guardiola definitely likes Mukasa and City will hope that at least some of the moves directly help their first team. But they will be happy to have produced a winning cycle of youngsters that will all go out and represent City and the academy in the wider game to keep building up their reputation.