In the summer transfer window, the club, one of the richest in the world since its 2008 takeover by the Abu Dhabi United Group, spent £126 million on players, including Jérôme Boateng from Hamburger SV, Yaya Touré from Barcelona, David Silva from Valencia, Aleksandar Kolarov from Lazio, Mario Balotelli from Inter Milan and James Milner from Aston Villa.

Popular City midfielder Stephen Ireland was transferred to Aston Villa as part of a player exchange agreement in the Milner deal.

In the first leg 1–0 away victory over Timișoara in the play-off round, Mario Balotelli scored the single winning goal on his debut, but also incurred a serious knee injury that required surgery, putting him out of action for the next three months.

[4] Balotelli was not the only one of City's new crop of high-profile summer signings to fall victim to an early serious injury, with Jérôme Boateng missing out on the first six weeks of the new season due to a knee injury he picked up playing for Germany in an international friendly match against Denmark back in mid-August,[5] while Aleksandar Kolarov seriously damaged his ankle ligaments in the opening match of the season against Tottenham Hotspur.

The loss of Boateng and Kolarov – taken together with recent injuries to Micah Richards (hamstring), Wayne Bridge (thigh injury coming right on the back of a prolonged absence due to a cracked foot bone) and Joleon Lescott (groin) – meant that Roberto Mancini found himself without five of his eight main back four defenders going into City's home match against Chelsea, causing him to claim that he had a defensive injury crisis for that game,[6] which nevertheless City still managed to win convincingly due to a stellar defensive performance from the back four (Dedryck Boyata, Kolo Touré, Vincent Kompany and Pablo Zabaleta) that Mancini was able to field.

Awarded annually at a meeting of the Institute of Groundsmanship organisation as a result of voting by professional football grounds management teams from the whole of the UK.

This 'loan watch' report Archived 23 March 2011 at the Wayback Machine provided the latest progress update on most of the players listed above that were out on loan at other clubs.