Man City signing Marc Guehi from under Liverpool's noses exposes humiliating transfer trend

Liverpool has just missed out on Antoine Semenyo after the forward chose to join Manchester City, and the Reds also look set to miss out on another standout Premier League star

Marc Guehi looks set to join Manchester City(Image: Getty Images)

Liverpool looks to have missed out on another transfer target after it emerged that Manchester City is closing in on a deal to sign the Crystal Palace captain Marc Guehi.

Palace is set to sell Guehi to City for a cut-price fee of £20 million ($27 million) in order to avoid losing him for nothing at the end of the season.

Guehi is into the final six months of his contract at Palace, and a battle for his services was expected to ensue this summer, but City has accelerated its interest in the England international in the wake of a couple of key central defenders sustaining significant injuries.

Josko Gvardiol suffered a broken leg against Chelsea earlier in January that will sideline him for several months, while Ruben Dias sustained a hamstring problem in the same game that is expected to keep him out for up to another month.

John Stones has also not played for several weeks, leaving City's options in the center of defense threadbare.

Max Alleyne, 20, was recalled from a loan spell at Watford in the wake of the injuries to Gvardiol and Dias, and has lined up in each of City's last three games.

The impending arrival of Guehi, though, will surely see him go straight into the team alongside Abdukodir Khusanov. Khusanov joined City 12 months ago and, after an unsteady start to life in the Premier League, is starting to settle in.

Khusanov and Guehi are, in fact, just two of many players that City has signed since last season's winter transfer window opened, with the Blues having spent heavily in order to revamp its squad after a difficult start to the 2024-25 campaign.

Other signings in that time include Gianluigi Donnarumma, Vitor Reis, Rayan Ait-Nouri, Nico Gonzalez, Tijjani Reijnders, Sverre Nypan, Rayan Cherki, Omar Marmoush and Antoine Semenyo.

Those nine players, plus Khusanov and Guehi, would be enough to make a very competitive Premier League starting XI – and City has signed all of them in the space of a year.

So, after Liverpool was getting hammered for supposedly buying its way to Premier League success by signing a host of big-name players during last summer's transfer window, shouldn't we expect the same level of scrutiny on Manchester City now?