Usually, a goodbye from Manchester City is a goodbye for good. Once you've left, you've left and there has been a whole lot of leaving in recent years.
It's hard to keep track as there as so many but it feels as though there must be approaching a thousand players to have passed through City since the academy underwent a 'holistic' revamp in 2013. The aim was for every player from eight-year-olds onwards to play the same passing style of football to make jumping age groups easier and, ideally, the transition to the senior side as smooth as possible.
A decade later and results of that labour are bearing fruit. Thanks to the success of headliners Phil Foden and Jadon Sancho as well as the legion of former Blues across all four top English divisions and increasingly Europe, being a young player in the City academy is now seen as a guarantee of quality.
