Man City are repeating Harry Maguire approach with Marc Cucurella and it could cost them

Manchester City set valuations for certain transfer targets that they will not move beyond, a club lazily painted as having bottomless funds instead pulling the plug on any deal that they think is spending more than they should.

That appears to be the case with Marc Cucurella. Just as happened with Jorginho and Napoli in 2018, City have been in a queue of one to sign a player and yet their public refusal to meet the asking price of the selling club has alerted Chelsea to swoop in and beat them to a player with a higher offer.

Should Cucurella complete a move to Stamford Bridge, there will be shrugs inside the Etihad and a reminder of the transfer policy led by Txiki Begiristain. City would rather miss out on signing players than go against a fundamental pillar of their strategy.

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There are several examples of the club defying expectations with this that back up a stance that can be unpopular with fans eager to see reinforcements; City won the league with 98 points despite not signing Jorginho or another central midfielder in 2018, while missing out on Fred and Alexis Sanchez to United has come to be seen as bullets dodged as those players have failed to justify their fees. Despite bombing out the only left-back signed since 2017 after six months, Pep Guardiola has ingeniously managed to fill that void by using three players out of position there.

Another name thrown about when citing lucky misses is Harry Maguire. City wanted to sign the centre-back in 2019 to replace Vincent Kompany but would only go to £70m where Leicester wanted £80m and United stepped in to sign him instead, paying a world-record fee for a defender.

It is easy to see