Premier League side Man City have set their summer transfer budget as they prepare to ‘sacrifice’ one of their players, according to reports.
The Citizens have been having a poor season in the Premier League by their standards with Liverpool ending Pep Guardiola’s four-year domination of the league.
Man City are now facing a battle to qualify for the Champions League this season with two matches to play and took another knock on Saturday as they lost the FA Cup final 1-0 to Crystal Palace.
An early Eberechi Eze goal was the difference with Man City now set to end the season without a trophy for the first time since the 2016/17 campaign.
Man City will need Champions League money to give Guardiola exactly what he wants in the summer transfer window and it will also be boosted by the sale of James McAtee, who has been linked with Bayer Leverkusen and Nottingham Forest.
And Football Insider senior correspondent Pete O’Rourke has revealed how much Man City are looking to spend in the summer and insists McAtee is likely to be “sacrificed”.
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O’Rourke told Football Insider: “Their spending power is there to see for everyone. They did spend quite heavily in January, it was around £180million on five new signings after having been making profit on player sales for the last five years.
“Last summer, they made a net profit of £139million which helps with the transfer kitty. They’ve sold a lot of homegrown talent which is then pure profit on the books as well going into this summer’s transfer window.
“They’ll be saving on Kevin de Bruyne’s wages, and once he leaves there’s been suggestions they could sell some more homegrown talent to help fund their window.
“James McAtee is one player who could be sacrificed and any sale there would be pure profit. Another factor is the Club World Cup, if they were to win that it would be very lucrative.
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“So the club are ready to back Pep Guardiola like they did in January, and they’ll probably have a similar kitty of around £180-200million to spend.”
While The Daily Telegraph claims that Man City ‘will target four major signings during the summer transfer window’ and incoming director of football, Hugo Viana, has ‘started work on adding two midfielders, a left-back and a right-back to the squad, on top of the four other signings made last January as the club attempted to salvage their season’.
Finding replacements for Kyle Walker and Kevin de Bruyne are at the top of their priorities for the summer, while Tijjani Reijnders has been linked as a new midfielder.
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