So you're Man City, money is no object - who do you buy?

[boxingbantz]

Ok i'll bite.

First of all, you don't know what you're talking about regarding what happened with Kaka. You absolutely don't. It went a little something like this....

The reason the Kaka deal fell apart was mostly down to Milan and his Dad (also his agent)being very unprofessional. The offer was accepted so we entered negotiations with his Dad. Negotiations we're going very well and at this point we had his Dad's word that he'd sign. This lead to Mark Bowen (He was the then assistant manager) releasing a comment to the BBC stating that a deal was very close.

However, whilst this was going, the Milan Ultras began to stage protests in the streets. Silvio Berlusconi and Adriano Galliani were both threatened by the Ultras. This all started to put pressure on the deal.

Negotiations broke for the weekend because Milan had a game. On the night of the game, one of the directors at Milan had started to tell some Milan shareholders that the sale had been agreed. This was reported as fact on Sky Sports News at the time.

Monday morning came around and the negotiations started again. The professionalism and hospitality shown by Milan was an actual disgrace and it meant that nothing really got done. The protests in the streets also didn't help. It got to the point on that night where Kaka's Dad wanted it to go through and all he wanted was a contract to sign as we had agreed to his salary in principal.

Unfortunately it's not as easy as offering a contract and getting the player to sign it. It's not Football Manager. Kaka was tied in with a lot of sponsorships with Milan and Adidas and he was also entitled to an awful lot of image rights for various other Milan related things. We'd spent a lot of time going through all of this and getting all of the red tape done by Tuesday, so we could actually make it official. Italian Media we're actually reporting that the deal had gone through in principal and all that was missing was the final signature, which was merely a formality.

Because of the severity of the protests, Kaka's Dad and Milan wanted to rush through the deal. We couldn't. This lead to them demanding we present them with a contract to sign. This was impossible so we walked away. Garry Cook received a phone call whilst he was at the airport from Kaka's Dad, pretty much asking him to offer the contract. Again, it couldn't physically be done until all the sponsorships had been done.

That was where Cook's 'bottled it' comment stems from. Now i don't expect you to believe that, as i'm guessing you're a United fan, it's much easier for you to believe The Sun or some other know nothing journalist who reveled in the complete fallacy that Kaka did indeed say no.

I suggest you read the comments made by Garry Cook and read all of the contradictions made by Berlusconi, Galliani and Kaka shortly after the deal fell through.

If that's not enough, ask yourself why it took so long for the deal to collapse if it hadn't reached such an advanced stage. Ask yourself why, if he wasn't interested, would we even have negotiated in the first place. I mean Robinho and Elano are very good friends of his. It wouldn't have been hard for us to find out if he was interested in listening to what we had to say

I'll ignore the insults and generalisations you've aimed at City fans. It's about as relevant as me saying all United fans are glory supportes living in London/Thailand/anywhere but Manchester.

Moving on to Tevez and you're laughable comment about how he'll be definitely off because he's a mercenary. First of all, you've defeated yourself with that comment, because surely if he was a mercenary he's going to stick around given the money he's on? Secondly, i imagine Berbatov and Rooney all play for free. Yes?

Ignoring your Torres dig and getting back on topic, we're short of a left back, two central midfielders and probably two wingers. We have a deal in place with Hamburg for Jerome Boateng who is a right back.

After that, i know we've been in contact with benfica (as reported by ESPN) about David Luiz who is a left back and Angel Di Maria who is a left winger. Di Maria will definitely leave Benfica this summer, but there are other teams to consider for him. I've no idea who our midfield targets are, but i do know we're trying very hard to sign Fernando Torres. Not qualifying for the Champions League hasn't altered anything in that respect because Liverpool haven't either. It's a question of where the best future prospects and chances of success lie. Given we've finished above them and have money to spend, in contrast to their current situation, i'd say that he has some thinking to do. Personally i wouldn't bother, given his injury record and given that we're OK upfront.

Anyway i'm glad that you find it amusing that we're trying to sign this calibre of player. It will make it all the more sweeter when it happens


Smashup - Mancini is definitely staying.

You bitters live in another world. I am sure you witnessed all of these events unfold in person? Jesus wept.