Tuesday 27 January 2009

Tuesday transfer round up

  • Ian Herbert writes that there will be one more bid for Roque Santa Cruz, this time of £19million. He also mentions possible moves for Shay Given and Kolo Touré. Nothing groundbreaking here.
  • Nor in an almost identical piece in The Times.
  • But there is something new in the Telegraph. Two of their writers (Oliver Brown and Rory Smith), about whom I know nothing, claim that City are 'understood to be monitoring the situation' of Robbie Keane at Liverpool. He is very much out of favour with Benítez and if he is put up for sale (and our move for RSC falls through) we could apparently rival Spurs for his signature. This is also in The Guardian here.
  • The Daily Star says that Steve Harper has been told that he will start on Wednesday, given Shay Given's pending move to City. Given's not playing on Wednesday is almost as good news as the fact that we're seemingly about to sign him.

1 comment:

satis said...

It may seem an obvious thing to say but Hughes is unnaturally keen on Cruz, a man with only 4 goals this season. Blackburn (including Fat Sam) will be mighty pleased to get £19m for him.

Cruz would leave us with a picketline of strikers. Most successful clubs have four, which in City's case would be Cruz, Sturridge, Bellamy and Bojinov. That leaves quite a number out in the cold and I wouldn't be surprised to see Benjani and Vassell depart.

As for defenders, the later in January we get, the more inevitable it seems that Kompany will be playing centre half for much of the rest of the season. There's so little talk of new players in that position, I think Hughes must be satisfied for now with Richards, Dunne, Onouha, Kompany and the awful Ben Haim.