City has been linked with several players this summer, but the club insists they will not be paying ‘crazy money’ for anyone this summer.
“There are two things going on. 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,” he told Abu Dhabi based newspaper The National.
“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 £10million player will be offered to us for a ‘City price’ of £20million.
“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 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.”
“When we looked at Kaka, the numbers being thrown around were crazy, suddenly in the news you see ‘City are crazy’ and ‘City are irresponsible’,” he continued.
“Why is it when Real Madrid not only talks about but actually closes two deals, like the ones they’ve closed with the numbers they’ve committed to, it’s fine?”
“We will shrink our squad and add four to six players,” he added.
“Key for us is that we trust Mark (Hughes) and any acquisition is based on his view.
“Our transfer process is very simple, we have Mark and his team who take football decisions, we have Gary Cook and myself on the management side and Sheikh Mansour as the owner.
“Mark decides on gaps in the squad and makes recommendations on players that would fill the gaps.
“He comes to me and gives me option A, B or C for a certain position. With each player there’s a different value and it’s up to us to work with Sheikh Mansour, determine a budget and see which player fits best.”
