City owners promise shake-up

Gareth Barry was the first arrival at Eastlands in a £12million deal from with Aston Villa and now chairman Khaldoon al Mubarak has revealed there will be a number of comings and goings at the north-west club.

He told The National, an Abu Dhabi english language paper: "We will shrink our squad and add four to six players. Key for us is that we trust (manager) Mark (Hughes) and any acquisition is based on his view."

Al Mubarak also insisted City would only pay realistic fees for players and criticised what he feels is an unfair perception of the club.

"There are two things going on," he continued. "One, a general view of Arab investors and two, a whole hierarchy within football where there is a group of clubs that fall within the hierarchy and the clubs that fall outside don't have a seat at the table and shouldn't even demand one.

"I'm frustrated with people assuming we are going to throw crazy money at deals, that we won't understand true values and we can't negotiate or get value for a player.

"We've had numbers thrown at us that are a joke. There are situations where a £10 million player will be offered to us for a 'City price' of £20 million. We just leave because at that point there's no point arguing - if people are throwing crazy numbers at us, fine, deals won't be done.

"Look at (City owner) Sheikh Mansour, he's a very shrewd businessman who has conducted himself in a professional way. I will defend the value of every deal we have done.

"Look at our Robinho deal. If he went in this transfer window for the same price [£32.5m] it would be a steal.

"Our deals to date presented fair value to the clubs we brought them from, fair value to us and are typical of the type of deals we are looking to make."