Manchester City spends $600 million over the summer, arrives loaded for the new season

Six hundred million dollars. That's how emphatic Manchester City has been in this summer transfer window, and the number makes it clear that things at the Etihad are not being done halfway following Pep Guardiola's departure from the bench. Two straight wins to open the season, combined with spending that no other club in Europe can match, and the sense that this team fell short last time around has all but vanished.

The window closed with a bang. City signed Enzo Fernandez and Iliman Ndiaye on deadline day, two moves that pushed the summer's total outlay past $600 million. That's on top of the previous week's arrivals of Moroccan midfielder Ayyoub Bouaddi and Brazilian winger Allan, who came in for a combined $160 million and were originally viewed as depth pieces.

The upshot is that within a matter of weeks, head coach Enzo Maresca went from having a threadbare squad to facing a far more welcome problem: too many good options to choose from. That's no small shift given how preseason started. With Rodri, Bernardo Silva and Tijjani Reijnders all out the door and no immediate replacements in place, Maresca was at one point forced to play center back Marc Guehi in midfield out of sheer necessity.

That picture is now a thing of the past. The coach must decide which of Elliot Anderson, Enzo Fernandez or Bouaddi to deploy in front of the back line, tasked with providing balance and feeding the in-form Rayan Cherki, who has fully embraced his role as the team's creative hub. Out wide, things are no simpler: Ndiaye and Allan now represent direct competition for established names like Phil Foden, Antoine Semenyo and Jeremy Doku.

With that kind of firepower on hand, the next opponent looks a little overmatched. Newly promoted Coventry visits the Etihad on Saturday after traveling to the Emirates and coming away, if you can call it that, "lucky" to lose by only 3-0 to Arsenal. Heading to Manchester in that shape hardly looks any more promising.

City had already opened the season with a 2-1 win over Bournemouth and a commanding 4-1 victory at Crystal Palace. Those early fixtures may have come at the best possible time to face an opponent that was still a work in progress, with a new coach settling in and players who weren't yet at full fitness after the World Cup. It's also worth remembering the Community Shield, where City turned in a flat performance and fell 3-0 to Arsenal.

Starting this weekend, a different story begins. With the squad now essentially complete and no more excuses left to lean on, this is the real moment to judge Maresca and this revamped City side.