The Blues have already brought Gareth Barry into the fold since the end of last season, and in an interview with The National, the English-speaking newspaper of the United Arab Emirates, Mr al Mubarak has stated that the Manager will be targeting more good value purchases.
He says, “We will shrink our squad and add four to six players. Key for us is that we trust Mark and any acquisition is based on his view.”
The arrival of Barry two weeks ago sparked intense speculation in the media as to whom else might arrive at City before the end of August, but the Chairman insists that the Club will be taking a realistic view over possible new arrivals.
“There are two things going on,” he adds. “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.
“Mr al Mubarak has also reflected on last week’s transfer of Kaka from AC Milan to Real Madrid in light of City’s interest in the Brazilian star last January.
“When we looked at Kaká, the numbers being thrown around were crazy, suddenly in the news you see ‘City are crazy’ and ‘City are irresponsible’.
“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?”
