Eliaquim Mangala will leave Manchester City for free at the end of the season — after costing the champions-elect almost £1million for EACH Premier League appearance.
City have paid out a staggering £56m in transfer fees and wages for the French international defender, who arrived from Porto four years ago.
He has played in just 57 top-flight games for the Blues – and that includes six coming on as a substitute.
City paid a fee of £43.5m for Mangala in the summer of 2014. Almost 40 per cent of that money went to two companies who held an economic stake in the player.
And the 27-year-old centre-back has also banked wages of just under £12.5m from City in a disastrous four-season stay which will end with him having made just 79 appearances for the club all told.
City’s outlay would have been even more expensive had they not managed to send Mangala on loan to both Valencia and Everton, as his dream move to the Etihad turned into a nightmare.
When he spent the 2016-17 season in Spain, half of his basic £80,000-a-week wages were paid by Valencia.
Mangala will become a free agent in the summer when his City contract ends.
Inter Milan are interested and Valencia are in the frame again after having decided the numbers didn’t add up when City offered them the player for just £15m last summer.
The Spanish club feared that paying City’s asking price and meeting Mangala’s wage demands would see them fall foul of Financial Fair Play Regulations – even though City were willing to subsidise the salary.
A few weeks later, Mangala ensured City would not recoup any cash on him at all when he rejected the chance to join Crystal Palace in a £23m deadline-day deal.
City scouted Mangala for over a year before signing him from Porto.
Within a year, then-boss Manuel Pellegrini decided he was not up to the required standard and unsuccessfully tried to send him on loan to Valencia, as a sweetener in the deal which saw Nicolas Otamendi arrive for £28.5m.
Mangala would eventually join the Spanish club on a 12-month loan deal when Pep Guardiola made it clear on his arrival in the summer of 2016 that the defender was surplus to requirements.
City have paid out £176.6m in transfer fees for centre-backs in less than four years.
As well as signing Mangala and Otamendi, they paid Everton £47.5m for John Stones in 2016, and then made Aymeric Laporte their most expensive player when they signed the Frenchman from Athletic Bilbao for £57.1m in January.