City boss Hughes presented new signing Roque Santa Cruz at an official media conference today and went on the record with the Club’s interest in Barcelona forward Eto’o and Tevez, whose loan at Manchester United has ended.
The Blues manager said: “Carlos is a player I have huge admiration for. He’s a great player and a great competitor, and any manager would be delighted to have him in the team. Carlos would be a real asset to our future plans but at the moment he’s not our player. We’ll see what happens.
“We’ve lodged a bid for Samuel Eto’o, and I don’t think there’s any update on that. We’ve tracked the players we think will help us and he’s one I’ve got a lot of respect for. We have to stand back and see what develops.
“We’ll all have to be patient. Every transfer is different - we were able to do the Gareth Barry deal very quickly, the one for Rocky was long-winded. We have to accept there may be others that will take a little bit of time.
“There is always an element of frustration when you can’t conclude deals quickly. But we will give every deal the patience we feel it deserves. If we get to a point where we feel something is not going to happen, that’s the time we move away. We’ve done that in the past.
“But we’ll continue to look at quality as we always have. It’s not about using the transfer market to make a statement about where we stand in the football world. We are building to challenge at the top table.”
Main man Mark expressed his delight at signing Paraguay ace Santa, a long-time target, from his former club Blackburn to follow England midfielder Barry as a key summer arrival at City of Manchester Stadium.
Santa Cruz has already shown his attitude and commitment to his new boss and team-mates by starting training early at Carrington, having missed the end of the season at Blackburn following a routine knee operation.
Hughes said: “I’ve got great respect for him as a player and as a person. His mentality as well as his ability will add to the squad. And he understands from his time at Bayern Munich the expectation being at a big club entails.
“He’s an ambitious player and he’s joined because he sees the ambition we have for our club. He will continue to improve himself as a player, and to get him here finally is a great relief from my point of view.”
