It's going to be very interesting seeing how City deal with this in the upcoming transfer windows. As things currently stand we have the following homegrown players in our first team squad.
Wright, Milner, Hart, Clichy, Rodwell, and Richards.
Then from the youth teams there.
Lopes, Rekik, Boyata, and potentially Huws.
However ... if we were to lose Richards and Rodwell it leaves us in a precarious position. Rodwell and Richards are both players who let the squad down this season due to injuries/performances and they need to be replaced with players who can have more of an impact, therefore the idea of moving one of our EDS youngsters up to take their squad positions is IMO unworkable.
That means that if we replace them both with 'foreign' players we will need to name 4 young players in our first team squad. That means a squad of no more than 21 senior players. The way I see it 20 of those 21 players would be (including the English players)
Hart, Wright, Pants, Zaba, MDM, Kompany, Kolarov, Clichy, Milner, Nasri, Silva, Garcia, Fernandinho, Yaya, Jovetic, Aguero, Dzeko, Negredo, Navas, Nastasic
That leaves room for only one player to come in in place of Rodwell, Lescott, and Richards which isn't going to work. Particularly if the deals for Sagna, Fernando, and Mangala are done. Hypothetically if you add those three to the squad then our homegrown quota problem becomes much more pronounced because adding those three gives us a first team squad of 23 players (without club trained players).
This is all before the prospect of a reduced squad size due to FFP sanctions which would make the numbers above even more problematic for that competition.
Personally I'm baffled as to why i these circumstances we're pursuing Fernando quite so hard. I'm not saying he's not a good player, but we need homegrown players who are good enough to play in the first team otherwise we'll fall foul of the PL and CL squad rules.
