Man City academy ready to rise to Pep Guardiola's public transfer challenge

It was clear that Pep Guardiola wasn't entirely happy with some of Manchester City's transfer business this summer, specifically with the departure of some of their youngsters.

A busy summer saw around £50m of transfer fees raised from sales of academy players, with four players joining Southampton for almost £40m. Guardiola spoke of those moves last week, where he praised City for raising so much money, and for including buy-back clauses on those players 'in case they explode'.

However, the manager also suggested that some youngsters don't have the patience to stay and develop at youth level, instead leaving to get first team opportunities sooner at other clubs.

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Romeo Lavia, Gavin Bazunu and Sam Edozie are all players who have featured in the Premier League so far, while a handful of others like Liam Delap and James McAtee have left for the Championship on loan. That has left a rather young Elite Development Squad, who are without most of their best players from last season.

Still, the new-look youngsters have started well in the Premier League 2 — a competition Guardiola criticised as not competitive enough — and they were impressive in their 5-1 UEFA Youth League win at Sevilla this week. Speaking after that game, U21 coach Brian Barry-Murphy addressed Guardiola's comments, joking: "I always agree with him!"

He then added: "No, obviously the standard of our first team is so high I think a lot of our lads get so much exposure over there. It's amazing for them, and some of them will do that and we will to progress there.

"And obviously some of them will have other avenues and I think in our environment in the academy, we have to be