Manchester City boss Mark Hughes believes the signing of Gareth Barry acted as a catalyst for other players to join the Eastlands revolution. Hughes went on to then land the likes of Emmanuel Adebayor, Carlos Tevez and Joleon Lescott in a £120million signing spree.

He said: "Gareth was always a player I had admired from afar.

"He has a huge range of passing and is able to be constructive and destructive in midfield.

"When you also take into account the amount of quality games he is able to produce over a long period of time, I just felt he was a player we needed to bring to the club.

"To a certain extent it helped other players to come as well.

"The fact we were able to get one of the key men in the England set-up under Fabio Capello helped our strategy in terms of acquisitions of players."