Fernandes signed for City in 2017 after also drawing interest from Liverpool

Liverpool paid a £1 million settlement to Manchester City after their Premier League rivals made a complaint that their scouting system had been hacked into.

The confidential settlement took place in September 2013 after it was reported that City had employed computer-espionage experts to see if the system had been spied on.

The scandal would appear to be the biggest incident of alleged misbehaviour by one top-flight club to another in the Premier League’s history.

The settlement came a year after three former City scouts moved to Liverpool. Two of them, as well as Michael Edwards who is now Liverpool’s sporting director, were alleged by City to have been involved in accessing their database on the Scout7 system on hundreds of occasions.

The two scouts