Man City chief outlines summer transfer plan

Manchester City chairman Khaldoon al Mubarak has said the club will buy up to six new players this summer but will not be prepared to pay inflated transfer fees.

He added that he would rather walk away from the table than pay over the odds in a reference to Real Madrid’s recent capture of Brazil’s Kaka for $90m million and Cristiano Ronaldo for $131m.

The chairman said he was refusing to be held to ransom by a perceived “City price” for players, reported UAE daily The National on Wednesday.

The club will buy four to six new players after purging the squad during the summer, he told the paper, without naming transfer targets,

“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," he said.

Mubarak also backed manager Mark Hughes and said that decisions on buying players would come from him.

“Key for us is that we trust Mark and any acquisition is based on his view.”

Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan, through Abu Dhabi United Group, took over Manchester City from former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in September, a deal exclusively revealed by Arabian Business.

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