2005: Jack Hobbs, Reported £750,000 (£1.36m)
Destination: Liverpool
This is where we get back into the slightly murkier territory of reported figures. History will suggest we got a chunky fee for Hobbs, but the number included add-ons and clauses that were just not hit, so while the reported fee looks good, the actual fee is not as bold, but we don’t know what it is.
Hobbs had barely begun his senior career when Liverpool came calling in August 2005, with the fee widely reported as £750,000. An academy graduate, Hobbs had made just a single league appearance for City, becoming the club’s youngest-ever debutant at 16 years and 149 days, before Liverpool signed him on his 17th birthday. The move also created a neat historical link, because Ted Savage had set a new City transfer record by joining Liverpool in 1931, and 74 years later the same club returned to establish another benchmark.
Hobbs went on to make his Premier League debut for Liverpool before building the bulk of his career elsewhere. He impressed on loan at Leicester City, helping them win League One in 2008/09 and earning a place in the PFA Team of the Year, before joining them permanently and later moving on to Hull City, Nottingham Forest and Bolton Wanderers. He made more than 300 senior league appearances in total and also represented England at under-19 level. By the end of the 2020/21 season, that reported £750,000 fee was still believed to be City’s record sale, meaning the benchmark set by a teenager with only one league appearance had survived for more than 15 years.
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