Elliot Anderson Declares Manchester City the “Kings of Manchester” After Completing £116m Move From Forest

Elliot Anderson picked a fight with Manchester United before he had trained with a single new teammate.

The 23-year-old completed his move to Manchester City from Nottingham Forest this week in a deal worth £116m, and used his first interview as a City player to throw down a marker for the club he left behind in the race for his signature. Asked about the first Manchester derby of the new season, away at Old Trafford on September 13, Anderson did not hedge.

“It’s one of the biggest derbies in the world and for as long as I’ve known Manchester, City have been the kings of Manchester,” he said. “It’ll be a great fixture, and I can’t wait to be involved in something like that.”

United had tracked Anderson this summer. City won the race for his signature, and the midfielder made clear where his loyalties now sit before he had kicked a ball for his new employers.

The stakes attached to that fixture are obvious. City and United have shared the balance of power in Manchester for over a decade, and both clubs are now rebuilding under new management. Anderson will walk into Old Trafford in September as a player United wanted and did not get, in a stadium that will not let him forget it.

The deal

Anderson has signed a five-year contract at the Etihad Stadium, with the option of a further 12 months attached. City agreed the transfer with Forest earlier in July, but the move was only finalised this week once Anderson returned from World Cup duty with England, where he helped Thomas Tuchel’s side to a third-place finish.

The England midfielder said he was “over the moon” to be joining “one of the biggest clubs in the world.”

“I can’t wait to play for this club,” he said. “It’s a club built to win trophies and compete at the very top of the game. That is exciting for any footballer.

“I think they’re winners, they’re relentless, and that’s the sort of team I want to be a part of. Over the last 10, 12 years, they’ve dominated, so that’s why I wanted to join.”

City director of football Hugo Viana, who signed off on the deal, called Anderson “one of the outstanding young midfield talents in world football.”

“We feel he can become a complete midfielder,” Viana said.

From Newcastle’s academy to a £116m midfielder

Anderson’s route to a £116m tag started a long way from the Etihad. He came through the youth ranks at Newcastle United, his boyhood club, and made 55 first-team appearances for the Magpies. A loan spell at Bristol Rovers earlier in his career earned him the nickname “Geordie Maradona.”

Forest paid £35m for him two years ago, and he went on to make 92 appearances for the club. His performances there earned him a first England call-up last season, and he quickly turned that opportunity into a regular place in Tuchel’s squad.

The circumstances behind that Forest deal make his rise to a £116m midfielder more remarkable. Newcastle sold Anderson in the summer of 2024 with their finances stretched by Profit and Sustainability Rules, and the accounting period closing on June 30. As an academy graduate, his sale registered as pure profit on Newcastle’s books, and the £35m fee helped the club avoid a points deduction. Two years on, Forest have turned that academy sale into a £116m windfall of their own, and Anderson has gone from a player Newcastle felt they had no choice but to release to one of the most sought-after midfielders in the Premier League.

“I’m only 23, so I’ve got plenty of time to get to my best levels,” Anderson said. “I’m definitely not there yet and there’s more to come from me.

“I think I bring a bit of everything. I bring quality, I bring physicality, energy. I’d like to think I’d get the fans excited, get them off their feet and bring energy to the team.”

The numbers on both ends of Anderson’s Forest career tell their own story. He arrived at the City Ground for £35m and leaves for £116m, an £81m profit for a club that had spent two seasons establishing itself back in the Premier League. Anderson’s development from a squad addition into one of the most valuable young midfielders in England did as much for Forest’s finances as anything else that happened at the club across those two years.

His performances for Tuchel’s England tell a matching story. Anderson turned a first call-up into a regular starting role, and did so in a squad packed with competition in central midfield. A £116m move to City will not lower the standard he is judged against with England. If anything, it raises the bar for a player who has already shown he can hold down a place in both a title-chasing club side and an international team that reached the final four of a World Cup.

Following De Bruyne

There is an added layer to Anderson’s move for City supporters who spent close to a decade watching Kevin De Bruyne define the position he now hopes to make his own.

“I think Kevin De Bruyne is someone who I’ve hugely looked up to over the past seven or eight years,” Anderson said. “I’ve always wanted to play like him. I’ve watched him all the time and to be sat here in the team that he was doing it for is so special.”

Anderson is currently enjoying a summer break after England’s World Cup run and will link up with Enzo Maresca’s squad for pre-season training next month, giving him time before he is thrown into a City midfield that has operated at the top of English football for over a decade.

Joining a squad in transition

Anderson arrives at a City that looks different from the one that dominated the Premier League under Pep Guardiola. Maresca has taken over as head coach, and long-serving figures from the Guardiola era have already departed this summer, including Bernardo Silva and John Stones. Anderson is one of the highest-profile arrivals of that rebuild, brought in as a long-term midfield addition rather than a short-term fix.

That context sharpens Viana’s description of him as a player who can become “a complete midfielder.” City are not just replacing departing names. They are building a midfield to carry the club through its next cycle, and Anderson has been signed as a central part of that plan rather than a squad player brought in to make up numbers.

A window of nine-figure fees

Anderson’s transfer is part of a summer in which nine-figure deals have stopped being the exception in the Premier League and started looking closer to the norm. His £116m fee sits alongside Sandro Tonali’s £100m move and Morgan Rogers’ £117m switch to Chelsea as three of the biggest transfers of the window so far.

The trend traces back to Jack Grealish’s £100m move from Aston Villa to City in 2021, a fee that looked extreme at the time and is now treated as a benchmark. The gap between that deal and today’s market has widened fast: the average cost of a top-end Premier League signing has jumped from £36.6m in the 2024-25 window to £70.5m this year.

Last summer produced two more entries at the top of that list, with Liverpool paying £116.5m for Florian Wirtz and £125m for Alexander Isak. Clubs with the financial power to compete at that level are no longer negotiating fees down from inflated starting points. They are setting the market themselves, and rival buyers are having to match it or walk away, as Arsenal discovered when they lost out on Rogers to Chelsea earlier this month.

Anderson’s own description of what he offers, quality, physicality and energy, reads as a deliberate contrast with the player he says he idolises. De Bruyne built a career on vision and a pass few others on the pitch could see. Anderson is not promising to replace that. He is offering City a different profile of midfielder to add alongside it, one built for the physical side of a Premier League title race as much as the technical side.

For Anderson, the transfer fee is already written into the record books. What drives him now, on the evidence of his first words as a City player, is proving he belongs in a midfield built by winners, and reminding Manchester United exactly what they missed.

There is still a pre-season to get through before any of that is tested. Anderson will use the coming weeks to rest after England’s World Cup run before reporting to Maresca’s training camp, giving him time to settle in away from the intensity of a competitive fixture. September 13 will arrive quickly enough. When it does, Anderson has already told Manchester United, and everyone else, exactly how he expects that afternoon to go.