Last season I pin-pointed Gael Clichy as a potential transfer target well before anyone else even mentioned his name, so hopefully anyone reading this article takes it seriously. You can read that article here.

We’ve just won the Premier League so all this talk of players only signing for the money can be forgotten now… Nasri was right! There are players from all around the world that would love to join the champions but what’s going to happen now?

Potential Transfers Out

Last season I was talking about the players that let us down & that weren’t good enough but it’s much different this season as we are at that level now where everyone is completely capable. So it’s going to be much more difficult to single out players but here are the players that I believe are likely / linked to leave the club this summer:

• Wayne Bridge*
• Emmanual Adebayor*
• Roque Santa Cruz*
• Kolo Toure
• Adam Johnson
• Stuart Taylor
• Vladimir Weiss*
• Aleksander Kolarov
• Edin Dzeko
• David Pizarro (Only on loan)
• Owen Hargreaves
• John Guidetti*

I think that the players that have been out on loan this season (*) are going to leave the club on permanent deals this summer but the rest I am not so sure about. Stuart Taylor will finally leave once his contract expires and Kolo Toure will probably want first team football as he approaches the end of his playing career. I don’t believe that we NEED to see Johnson, Kolarov or Dzeko leave but all of the paper talk makes it believable. I like Dzeko both on and off the field but we just don’t play to his strength’s, it would be a shame to see him leave. Adam Johnson has the potential to be great but he is far too inconsistent, he needs first team football and will probably push for a move to somewhere like Everton, Sunderland or Liverpool. Kolarov has greatly improved since his first season in the Premier League, his set-pieces can be brilliant but he too is far too inconsistent and has a lazy appearance when he plays.

This would create quite a large transfer kitty in the region of around £68m which would of course go straight back into buying replacements. 

Potential Transfers In

Edin Dzeko has been strongly linked with a move to German giants Bayern Munich, and if the deal is right, I can see us snatching their hand off. Should he leave, we will sign a massive replacement. I have heard us linked with everyone including Gonzalo Higuain and Robin Van Persie, I feel that Higuain is the much more likely of the two but I doubt either of them would actually happen. Higuain is a top striker and someone I wouldn’t have an issue with if we were to sign him. He doesn’t have an ego and goes about his business in a professional manner unlike Tevez and Balotelli but does Mancini fancy him? I don’t think he does. I think Mancini would prefer Edinson Cavani who I pinpointed as a transfer target before the start of last season, although in my eyes, he is similar to Dzeko and we wouldn’t play to his strengths. I would like to pinpoint Karim Benzema as the number one transfer target for Manchester City this season. I think he is a realistic option upfront and someone that would be the perfect partner for Sergio Aguero this coming season. His movement and use of the ball is the opposite of Aguero’s and a combination of the two could be the perfect match. He would be an expensive buy and Real Madrid will try to use Silva as a make-weight but I feel keeping Silva is more important than gaining Benzema, so that option should be out of the question. We’ve been linked with Neymar in the past too, but I’m doubtful he will leave Santos for a few seasons yet.

Adam Johnson is someone who has been linked with a move away from the club since the January transfer window and I can finally see it happening, he has his winner’s medal, now all he needs is first team football. Unfortunately we are not the club to be able to give him that and a move is imminent. In his place I believe we will target one of these two wingers, Gareth Bale or Thomas Muller. I believe that Bale will be our first choice target, and now that Harry Redknapp has left Tottenham Hotspur, this transfer is highly likely to happen. Should we fail in our attempt to sign Bale, Muller will be targeted in some form of swap deal with Edin Dzeko and Bayern Munich.  If we somehow fail to bring in either of the two, I believe we will look to someone young and less of a risk. I am hearing great things about Bologna’s rising star Gaston Ramirez and at 21 years old and 88 first team appearances to his name, he is a realistic target for Mancini this summer. Last season I mentioned Stephan El Shaarawy who has now broken into the AC Milan first team fold, although now I feel that he wouldn’t fit the bill here at Manchester City. One of the most exciting young talents out there is Borussia Dortmund’s Mario Gotze, he’s only 20 years old and is basically the David Silva of the German Bundesliga. We’ve been linked with Christian Eriksen for two years now, but going off what I have seen of him, I just don’t think he is good enough just yet.

Mancini clearly likes to have a mature wise head within his central midfield ranks, in the past two seasons it has been Patrick Vieria, Owen Hargreaves and David Pizarro. However, with the likes of Gareth Barry, Yaya Toure and Nigel De Jong all being mature wise heads in their own rights, maybe it’s time to sign a player for the future. In the past we have been linked with the likes of Jack Rodwell and Miralem Pjanić but I just don’t see these are realistic options. Last season I pointed out Rennes 21 year old defensive midfielder Yann M'Vila, I am sure you know who he is now. He is part of the French set-up at the Euros and has strongly been linked with a move to Arsenal, so I can’t see us signing him anymore. If you follow me on Twitter, you will have seen me going on about Javi Martinez from Athletic Bilbao. He is such a class-act on the ball, he is the future of Spanish international football and at just 23 he already has 233 senior appearances at club level. He is predominantly a holding central midfielder but he also possesses the ability to comfortably play at centre back. Who knows though, maybe we will surprise everyone and sign an attacking midfielder like Wesley Sneijder or top young prospect Nicolas Gaitan…

I can definitely see us signing a replacement for Kolo Toure this summer, should he leave or not. Last season Vincent Kompany and Joleon Lescott were a formidable pairing and there’s not really any serious reason to break them up right now, but if I was being picky, Lescott is close to his 30’s and has a slight lack of pace. I believe that our main defensive target this summer was AC Milan’s Thiago Silva but when the price quoted was near the €50 million mark and they came out as rejecting the offer from PSG, this transfer became out of the question. We then concentrated our attention to Giorgio Chiellini who I mentioned last season as a potential target. Like Lescott, Chiellini is a left-sided central defender and is rated extremely highly within the world of football. All talk of this transfer has cooled over the past few weeks so this tells me that we have been unsuccessful in our attempts to sign the player. We are now being linked with a £20m move for Liverpool’s Martin Skrtel, I believe that we have enquired about the availability about the player but my heart tells me that he will remain at Liverpool. I like the sounds of PSG’s Mamadou Sakho but everyone knows that he would cost an arm and a leg considering they are super-rich too. There is a strong possibility that we will sign one of Borussia Dortmund’s Championship winning centre-half pairing of Neven Subotic or Mats Hummels. Both are 23 years old, tall and would fit in nicely alongside Kompany. If none of the above goes down, expect Real Madrid’s Raul Albiol.

I can’t really see us allowing Aleksander Kolarov to leave this summer because the options available to us as a replacement don’t really seem to be sufficient enough. Of course there are players like Aly Cissokho, Marcel Schmelzer and Leighton Baines but I can’t imagine they would be happy to be back-up to Gael Clichy. In all fairness though, Mancini likes a squad rotation system and Kolarov got a fair few games, especially in the cup competitions. I identified Domenico Criscito as a potential target last season but with the match-fixing scandal and his omission from Italy’s Euro 2012 squad, it’s a major doubt… although I feel he would be a good option. I also want to give a mention to Athletico Madrid’s Filipe Luis who is regarded as one of the best left-backs in La Liga.

Should Stuart Taylor leave the club this summer, we will see a replacement and we will probably target someone much younger and possibly English. I have heard rumors of Jack Butland being lined up by Mancini and I can see this being completely true, he has the potential, he is young and after the Euro’s he has probably formed a relationship with Joe Hart. Of course he wouldn’t get much playing time at City for quite some time but through a combination of loans and pre-seasons he could be the next… Joe Hart. Should we fail in our bid to sign a younger target, we might turn to another veteran-pro on the cheap. Other possible young signings may include Bill Hamid, Esteban Alvarado or Thibaut Courtois.

Conclusion

We are Manchester City, we are rich and we have just won the Premier League. Who saw Sergio Aguero coming last season, I certainly didn’t. I often thought about how great it would be to sign a title winner but I just assumed it wasn’t a possibility. We can spend all day speculating who we might sign, but only the big cheese’s at City know what’s truly going on. I wouldn’t be surprised if we signed another world-class player out of the blue this season, a name that has not yet been mentioned. We can dream…