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Santa Cruz is set for City at start of club's £250m spree
Ken Dyer12.12.08
Manchester City will begin an anticipated £250million spending spree by signing Blackburn striker Roque Santa Cruz.
The Paraguayan, who played under City boss Mark Hughes at Ewood Park, has a release clause in his contract and is certain to move to Eastlands next month for £15m.
There had been speculation of a move for Santa Cruz in the summer after he scored 23 goals in his debut season for Rovers.
City owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nayhan, a member of the ruling family of Abu Dhabi and one of the richest men in the world, intends to break into English's football elite in record time.
Other stars linked with City include Chelsea leftbacks Wayne Bridge and Ashley Cole and West Ham forward Craig Bellamy.
Further afield the club are also said to have shown an interest in former Arsenal striker Thierry Henry, who is now at Barcelona, Juventus and Italy No1 Gianluigi Buffon, Valencia's Spain striker David Villa and France midfielder Franck Ribery, who is at Bayern Munich.
At a time when most English clubs are teaching prudence, City's huge transfer budget is bound to provoke shock waves throughout the rest of the Premier League and particularly top clubs such as Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool.
Reader views (10)
Jamo hows things at the bottom?
- Real Blue, London
Oh dear. The weekend's results don't seem to have backed up your amusing bravado, do they Jamo?
- Stu, Beckton, London
Jamo, Fulham turned over Arsenal so dont take it as a great achievement. What is funny Man City were some of the strongest critics of Chelsea when Abramovich came in accusing him of buying the title, looks like it's pot kettle
- Martin, London
No Jamo, your belief that money will suddenly haul you into a Champions League spot makes your comments laughable.
"Fear"?? I support West Ham pal, we've won one in ten, and we're level on points with your supposedly all-conquering barbarians.
Quite what the big four have to "fear" from a club in *cough* FOURTEENTH PLACE is, I have to say, not immediately obvious.
Still, have a nice weekend in cloud cuckoo land.
- Stu, Beckton, London
Jamo you lot have won nowt yet. Robinio is like the good kid in the park team who scores a few good goals while you languish in the bottom half. You can buy all the best strikers in the world and push the big 4 as much as you want but itll be years before you win anything credible. and you think Robinho is still gonna be good in 2-3 years after playing top level park football?
- Real Blue, London
Stu, Beckton
Your response shows just the type of fear of the so called 'big 4' I am talking about.
'How dare little City come and spoil the party....'
make way, because here we come......
We've alerady turned over Arsenal with our current squad dont forget
- Jamo, Manchester
Yeah. You guys are really gonna break into that top four and punish the big players.
Or be level on points with Tottenham, one of the two.
- Stu, Beckton, London
Surely if Man City want to spend some of their enourmous wealth, then that money is being pumped back into football and will cause a merry-go-round
- Mr Bluesky, Manchester
A blue moon is rising to break the stranglehold the 'big 4' have on the premiership
bring it on.....
- Jamo, Manchester
man city are going to effect the team morale so badly by giving all these players high wages with people like robinho on 150,000 per week and ireland who is on 35,000 the best performer is ireland and he will want more and all the other players will they will want 6 figuere salarys just like robinho
- Dale Blackwell, caldicot
