From Maicon to Mendy: Overdue full-back signings make City team to beat

Before this summer, you had to go back some way to find the last time Manchester City spent on a full-back.

Roberto Mancini was seemingly restless after guiding the club to its first top-flight title in 44 years, and toyed with a back-three during pre-season and the early competitive fixtures of the 2012-13 term. It was an unmitigated disaster, with Micah Richards expressing his confusion at the system, and Joleon Lescott clearly lost outside the familiar English confines of a back-four.

To be fair to the less tactically adaptive City ranks, Mancini did appear to show uncertainty when deploying a back-three: pitting a trio against one striker, when two should suffice.

Mancini eventually swallowed his pride and returned to what worked before. Due to Richards' lingering injury issues, right-back Pablo Zabaleta had to have an able deputy behind him, which came in the rather lumpy shape of former Inter Milan marauder Maicon.

The unfit 31-year-old's arrival in the final hours of the 2012 summer transfer window for around €3.75 million was the last time City parted with cash for a full-back. It was an ill-advised swoop, and the club then allowed the quartet of Zabaleta, Aleksandar Kolarov, Gael Clichy, and 2014 freebie Bacary Sagna to stagnate in those positions until now.

Related: Manchester City inks Mendy for reported record €57.5M fee

Benjamin Mendy's unveiling in this window confirms City's rise to a different stratosphere.

In the last campaign, it wouldn't have been remiss to describe Pep Guardiola's choices at full-back as on par with Jurgen Klopp's at Liverpool (James Milner and Nathaniel Clyne), and inferior to those on hand at seventh-placed Everton (Seamus Coleman and Leighton Baines), eighth-placed Southampton (Cedric Soares and Ryan Bertrand), and even ninth-placed Bournemouth (Adam Smith and Charlie Daniels).

It was a glaring and damaging dearth to Guardiola's designs. The tactician has often favoured versatility and attacking dynamism from his full-backs - see the range of roles played by Philipp Lahm and David Alaba under the Spaniard at Bayern Munich - but instead got a weathering contingent that forced him to sometimes select shot-shy Jesus Navas and Fernandinho as auxiliary options either side of his back-four.

Following a spell of frantic transfer activity, Mendy will introduce himself to Kyle Walker and Danilo on City's U.S. jaunt. Walker, undoubtedly the Premier League's leading right-back over the previous two campaigns, offers breathless work going forward. Danilo, who signed from Real Madrid for around €30 million, can play in either full-back slot, and flourished as a fill-in defensive midfielder during Santos' procurement of the Copa Libertadores in 2011.

In the four terms after Maicon was shipped out with one English season under his overreaching belt, City didn't spend a penny on full-backs. In the past 10 days, nearly €140 million has been spent on those positions, and combined with the existing depth on display, it's possible to form two high quality starting XIs:

Lineup one:

Lineup two:

Premier League title rivals be warned: Guardiola isn't necessarily done in the transfer window, hinting last week that Danilo and Mendy could be followed by another acquisition.

Alexis Sanchez and Kylian Mbappe have been rumoured to further strengthen the stacked frontline, with City linked to tapping-up allegations from the latter's employer, AS Monaco, last Thursday. But that didn't prevent Mendy's purchase from Les Monegasques, coming two months after Bernardo Silva carved the path from the principality into the old cotton town.

Further defensive recruits aren't out of the question, either. Centre-back Tosin Adarabioyo, a highly respected academy graduate born and raised in Manchester, will be given every chance to impress during the pre-season, but may prove vulnerable alongside Nicolas Otamendi, who's never been an assuring presence partnering John Stones. Fernandinho proved his adaptability by playing left-back in the recent friendly against Manchester United, but that void could be filled by Danilo, which would simultaneously free up the right-hand side for Pablo Maffeo or another surprise pick conceived by Guardiola.

The luxury lies in time. City has completed its priority signings with just one pre-season friendly played, rendering the late-window scrambles for Claudio Bravo, Kevin De Bruyne, and Martin Demichelis in recent years unnecessary this time around.

The defensive midfield positions are undermanned at Arsenal and Manchester United; Chelsea bought the greatest gamble of the breakout Monaco class in Tiemoue Bakayoko; Liverpool fruitlessly pursues expensive signings; and Tottenham Hotspur does nothing. City is the team to beat, and has the majority of the pre-season to conform to Guardiola's tactics.

The summer when Maicon arrived saw the untested Kieran Trippier, now Spurs' first-choice right-back, leave the club permanently. The recent initiations of Adarabioyo, Brahim Diaz, Phil Foden, and others suggest that City will not readily make that mistake again. The vast investment in the youth setup will see graduates compete with fellow young players - Stones, Leroy Sane, Raheem Sterling - rather than have their views to the first-team picture concealed by Maicon's (or a comparable expensive veteran's) considerable behind.

Guardiola's team isn't just for now, but for the next decade.

(Photos courtesy: Action Images)