sport news Man City's lost academy: £300MILLION of young talent - including Jadon Sancho ...

For most clubs, producing a starting XI worth over £300million from their academy alone would be heralded as a phenomenal success.

Unfortunately for Manchester City that talent has made a combined total of just 92 appearances for their first team - 64 of which were made by Leicester striker Kelechi Iheanacho alone.

While Pep Guardiola's gilded squad have just landed an unprecedented domestic treble, behind the scenes one of the country's best academies is haemorrhaging its best prospects.

Since the club's £200m state-of-the-art youth and training Etihad Campus opened in 2014, Monaco playmaker Rony Lopes, Bournemouth starlet David Brooks and England prodigy Jadon Sancho are among those who have slipped through City's clutches.

It has proved costly. Brooks, recently voted Welsh Player of the Year, was let go at the age of 16 for being too slight. He joined Sheffield United for nothing, and is now worth around £25m in the current transfer market, although there have been reports of a bid as high as £50m incoming from Tottenham. 

Lopes, meanwhile, was sold for a little under £9m, and is now thought to have a market value around three times higher. Sancho has been linked with a move to rivals Manchester United for more than £100m - 10 times the fee Borussia Dortmund paid for him in 2017.

Often, when a player is released it's simply a case of misjudgement. Brooks offers a clear example of this, and so does Kieran Trippier, who was let go by City seven years ago as it seemed unlikely he would ever displace club legend Pablo Zabaleta. City are also not the only side to have condemned a diamond in the rough to the scrapheap.

But it is Sancho's exit, coupled with the January departures of Brahim Diaz and Rabbi Matondo to Real Madrid and Schalke respectively, that tell an altogether different - and perhaps more troubling - story.

All three players were offered contracts to stay, but chose not to sign.

The circumstances of Sancho's exit are well known. He was offered the chance to become City's best-paid academy player ever. He rejected the offer.

A year-and-a-half later, the Londoner has won his first England caps, demoted Chelsea's £58m acquisition Christian Pulisic to the subs bench at Dortmund and topped the Bundesliga assists charts with 15, adding 12 goals to boot. He is becoming one of the most coveted players in world football.

Diaz and Matondo followed suit during the winter transfer window and they too rejected the chance to stay. But Sancho was not starting a new trend; in fact, these three players are only the latest to follow a steady stream of youngsters pointedly choosing to leave the club to better their career prospects.

In 2016, promising forward Rafael Camacho chose to leave City for Premier League rivals Liverpool instead. That same year, Tyrese Campbell - like Sancho - shunned a new contract to join Stoke City.

Twelve months later, Lopes left the club for Monaco in confusing circumstances - as Manuel Pellegrini had publicly asserted the 19-year-old would only leave on loan. Just hours after Pellegrini had spoken to the media, it transpired that Lopes had jumped at the chance to leave permanently. 

Last summer, Steven Gerrard's cousin, 17-year-old Bobby Duncan, walked out on City as he had become frustrated with a lack of opportunities. He followed Camacho to Anfield, having been with City since the age of 10.

It is clear that a concerning number of City's best youngsters are trying to jump ship, rather than attempting to break through the club's 'grass' ceiling.