Ranking the 5 best transfer windows of all time: Manchester City

#1: Summer 2010

Yaya Toure and David Silva are two of City's best-ever signings

Discounting January 2010’s transfer window – only Patrick Vieira and Adam Johnson arrived – the summer of 2010 was Roberto Mancini’s first proper crack at the transfer market with City and he made it count.

City finished third in the Premier League in 2010/11 and also won the FA Cup, and a lot of the success was down to a pair of players signed within two weeks of one another in July 2010. I’m talking, of course, about midfielders Yaya Toure and David Silva.

Both men arrived for £24m; Toure from Barcelona and Silva from Valencia, and both fit in immediately and were unbelievably good in their debut season – Silva was hailed by Carlos Tevez as “the greatest player City had ever signed” and won the club’s Player of the Month award three months running, while Toure proved to be a one-of-a-kind midfield powerhouse, and scored the winning goals in both the semi-final and then the final of the FA Cup, ending City’s 35-year wait for a major trophy. Both men remain at the club and while Toure’s time there appears to be waning, Silva is still an ever-present in City’s midfield.

While overshadowed by those two men, Aleksandar Kolarov and James Milner didn’t do bad for themselves either – Milner proved to be a tremendous utility player for Mancini and then Manuel Pellegrini and made plenty of appearances, while Kolarov remained a staple of the club until this summer’s move to Roma.

And while fans decried the bizarre Mario Balotelli, he also played a part in helping City to win the Premier League in 2011/12, as he provided the assist to allow Sergio Aguero to score that title-winning goal against QPR.

Due to the roles that Silva and Toure went on to play in their subsequent seasons, as well as their debut one for City, there’s no question that the summer of 2010 is by far the best transfer window that the club have had since their takeover.