Yaya Toure's Agent Makes Manchester City Quit Threat over Forgotten Birthday
Dimitri Seluk, the agent of Yaya Toure, has threatened his client could leave Manchester City after the club forgot to acknowledge the midfielder's birthday.
Toure is one year into a four-year deal worth £220,000, but Seluk warns the Ivorian powerhouse will gladly cut that time short because the Premier League champions make him feel like a "nobody," per Anthony Kastrinakis of the Sun (subscription required), and via David Kent of the DSSC:
“There is a big possibility Yaya will leave this summer. He is very upset. What happened at his birthday means the club don't care about him. It was proof. They can say whatever they want, "Oh we like him but we forgot". Forgot? About Yaya? The player who helped you to be two-times Premier League champions? The guy who helped you win the FA Cup and League Cup?”
Seluk's rant continued in a worrying turn of events for the newly crowned Premier League winners. He said a "normal team" would "at least give him good wishes," especially as the club held a party "two days" after the title win, Yaya's birthday.
The May 13 snub certainly riled Seluk up. He proceeded by saying, "if a player like Yaya went to Liverpool and they won the league for the first time in 24 years, Yaya would be a god in Liverpool."
He claimed Yaya is "no hero" at the Etihad, a "nobody" who is "very upset" about the situation. Seluk concluded by reiterating Yaya "started thinking about leaving the club," saying City are "stupid" and "wrong" if they think they "can buy everything," per Kent.
Such a lengthy and ferocious set of quotes may have the City board worried. Yaya admitted Paris Saint-Germain are a "great club" to French radio station RMC in January, per Sky Sports. He has since been linked with a summer move to the Parc des Princes, a switch that could appeal a little more right now, as reported by Simon Jones of the Daily Mail.
Yaya posted yet another terrific season with City. His 20 goals and nine assists from midfield put him in the running for this year's individual awards and massively aided City's run to their second title in three years, per WhoScored.com. His absence—most notably against Liverpool—highlighted how important the 30-year-old star is to maintaining a sense of overbearing physicality in Manuel Pellegrini's side.
Whether true or not, the story underlines how important Yaya is to Pellegrini's side. He stands alongside Vincent Kompany and Sergio Aguero as the most vital members of the squad, a player in which City's recent history is built upon. Failure to acknowledge his birthday would be unfortunate at this time of year, especially considering the undoubtedly busy City schedule across the past week.
Only time will tell. It could very well turn out that Yaya wishes to receive a pay rise and is kicking up a fuss to land extra money. In terms of ability and importance, he easily matches the £300,000 per week earned by Wayne Rooney at Manchester United, per the Daily Mail, a sum City may struggle to pay after UEFA imposed its financial fair play rules on the squad.
Yaya will need to confirm his feelings for this one to be solved. Right now, there's sure to be a few fluttering heartbeats across the City board, supporters and maybe even in Paris.
Bacary Sagna opens talks with Manchester City but Arsenal hopeful after FA Cup triumph
Premier League champions to offer right-back three-year deal worth more than £100,000 a week
Manchester City have made contact with representatives of Bacary Sagna as the right-back seeks to make a final decision on his future before the World Cup.
The 31-year-old is out of contract at Arsenal and, with the France squad meeting up later this week to begin their World Cup preparations, Sagna now needs to decide where he will play and live next season.
City are in pole position, with the Premier League champions ready to offer Sagna a three-year deal worth well in excess of £100,000 a week. Arsenal believe their offer is generous at around £90,000 a week until 2017 but will not go any further for a defender in his thirties.
Manchester United are also interested but Sagna is now expected to follow former Arsenal team-mates Gaël Clichy and Samir Nasri in joining Manuel Pellegrini’s squad.
Losing Sagna would be a significant blow to Arsenal following a year of on-off contract negotiations with a player who has made more first-team appearances than anyone at the club.
Paul Lambert staying put at Aston Villa as Scot eyes Man City star Joleon Lescott
Billionaire owner Lerner wants out and has put the club up for sale but Lambert said it never crossed his mind to walk away.
And he's told Lerney that he's going to give him a list of players he wants and leave the rest up to him.
Lambert and chief executive Paul Faulkner met Lerner in New York at the weekend to thrash out the way forward.
And the Villa boss admitted that although things were far from bright he is hopeful of getting in quality players either on loan or frees.
He wants Manchester City's former England defender Joleon Lescott and will ask Lerner to try to finance it.
He's also hoping to go down the route of attracting top quality stars in the mould of Gareth Barry and Romelu Lukaku.
And despite working with his hands tied behind his back, Lambert remains upbeat about the task in hand.
He said: "If you quit once, then you will quite twice and if you quit twice then you will do it three times and I'm certainly no quitter.
"It never crossed my mind, not once. I've had a duty to protect this football club and that's what I've done.
"I don't like to think about what would have happened if we had gone down.
"As for bringing players in, well it's not going to be easy but I will do everything I can.
"All I can do is recommend players who this club should get in. I've known about the sale of the club for a while.
"I knew what was around the corner, but it has always been more important for me that the club was okay.
"The club is the important thing, it's never been about me. I've never been one like that to just look after myself."
“I don't like to think about what would have happened if we had gone down”
Paul Lambert
Lambert said he realises that if a new owner came in he could be the first one out of the door.
And he confirmed that he'd love to get former England defender Lescott to the club.
"All I can do is my best. I'm relieved this is all out in the open. I hope the fans understand, because we need everybody pulling together," he added.
"It's up to me to try and get the players in that this club deserves and I will be doing my best on that front.
"I will let other people judge me on what I have done, that's not for me to say.
"But it's time to roll up your sleeves and get on with it and that's what I intend doing."
Manchester City trail £12m Ryan Shawcross as Newcastle also weigh up transfer
Manchester City and Newcastle are showing interest in Stoke defender Ryan Shawcross.
The 26-year-old had another good season at the Britannia Stadium and was voted the club's player of the year.
Manager Mark Hughes does not want to lose him but offers of around £12million may be difficult to turn down.
City are weighing up potential 'homegrown' players but have yet to make any official bid
Stoke are showing interest in a loan for Arsenal's Costa Rica striker Joel Campbell who impressed on loan at Olympiakos.
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[/spoiler]Liverpool and Inter Milan are interested in signing left-back Ashley Cole, 33, who has announced he will leave Chelsea this summer.
Yaya Toure wants to leave Manchester City and could take a pay-cut to force a move. The Ivory Coast midfielder, 31, was angry that City took time to give him a new deal last year and was upset that no-one from the club wished him happy birthday last week. Sun
Paris St-Germain are ready to shock Chelsea with a £50m bid for 23-year-old playmaker Eden Hazard this summer. Daily Mirror
Mario Mandzukic, 27, is set to be Louis van Gaal's first signing as Manchester United manager, after the Croatia striker had a bust-up with Bayern Munich boss Pep Guardiola. DSSC
Arsenal are set to make Toulouse right-back Serge Aurier, 21, their first signing of the summer transfer window to replace Sagna. Daily Star
Liverpool, Arsenal and Newcastle want West Ham's Senegal midfielder Mohamed Diame, 26. Sun
Newcastle manager Alan Pardew is considering a move for West Ham midfielder Mark Noble, 27. Daily Star
Liverpool are closing in on Bayer Leverkusen's Germany Under-21 international Emre Can, 20, in a deal worth up to £10m. Independent
French midfielder Morgan Schneiderlin, 24, wants to leave Southampton and play for a Champions League side. Daily Express
Derby's players will double their entire season's wages and split a bonus of £4.5m if they beat QPR in Sunday's Championship play-off and win promotion to the Premier League. Daily Mirror
Norwich City will name their new manager - expected to be Malky Mackay - within days and also plan to appoint a technical director in a new management structure at Carrow Road. Sky Sports
Barcelona winger Gerard Deulofeu will not return to Everton for a second season on loan with the 20-year-old set to feature in the plans of new boss Luis Enrique. DSSC
QPR midfielder Adel Taarabt, 24, is set to return from his loan spell at AC Milan rather than make his San Siro move permanent after struggling to adapt to life with the Italian outfit. TalkSHIT
Popstar Miley Cyrus has shown her colours as a Red Devil after being spotted wearing a Manchester United shirt while on tour in Birmingham. DSSC
David Beckham, Wayne Rooney, Gary Lineker and other England stars turned into bite-sized artwork
Gazza, Beckham, Lineker, Shearer and Rooney
The faces of Gary Lineker, Paul Gascoigne, David Beckham, Alan Shearer and current England star Wayne Rooney have been skilfully carved into bite-sized artwork in the run-up to the World Cup.
Micro-artist, Quentin Devine, has carved portraits of England footie heroes out of Brazil Nuts to launch a new Dave new series ahead of this summer’s tournament in Brazil.
Each Brazil nut, measuring an average of 1.5 by 2 centimetres, took on average a painstaking 96 hours to carve with Quentin working day and night to perfect Rooney’s hairline, the raw emotion of Gazza and Beckham’s dashing good looks.
The artist worked his way through 53 nuts before finally cracking the finished portraits and spent the most time finessing Gary Lineker’s oversized ears.
GOLDEN BOLLOX 20-5-2010
City must pay £43m to bring Benfica's Luiz to Manchester
New Portuguese champions will fight hard to keep their hugely promising Brazilian defender for one more year
Manchester City will need to pay €50m (£43m) if they are to bring the Benfica defender David Luiz to Eastlands, a huge investment in a player who is as yet uncapped by Brazil and who will take a lot of persuading to give up the prospect of Champions League football next season.
Luiz's potential has led to a number of clubs, including Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus and Bayern Munich monitoring his progress, though the Benfica president, Luis Filipe Vieira, declared this week that only one of his title-winning squad – Oscar Cardozo – will be allowed to leave the Estadio da Luz for less than the value of their release clause. Luiz, 23, contracted until 2014, has a £43m release clause.
City manager Roberto Mancini's interest is understandable, given the widely held view that Luiz, who turned down the opportunity to join Real Madrid to play for their second team a year before arriving at Benfica in 2007, is the best defender Portugal has seen in 20 years. Real's interest may be revived if Jose Mourinho arrives at the Bernabeu this summer given that Luiz, like many of the Benfica side, shares an agent – Jorge Mendes – with Mourinho.
City certainly have the greater buying power now, though Luiz is deeply attached to Benfica and the club's fans – he is the one player who runs across to applaud the supporters after every game – and sources in Portugal believe Vieira may try to persuade the player to stay for one more year and leave next summer, possibly a Brazil international by then and hence more valuable. Benfica may not be in need of the money which the sale of Luiz brings in, if Cardozo and Angel di Maria, their brilliant left winger, both depart this summer. Real are considering Di Maria's £40m buy-out clause, and selling the two players may bring in a total of £50m for the newly-crowned Portuguese champions.
Talks between City and Benfica on Luiz are some way off, with Vieira, his manager Rui Costa and the player all currently in the United States for Benfica's end-of-season tour. Vieira, who handles transfer business at the Lisbon club, will then holiday in Timor. But City, who also anticipate a drawn-out pursuit of Aston Villa's James Milner, badly need a player of Luiz's versatility after the poor seasons defenders Kolo Touré and Wayne Bridge have just had. Though the Brazilian, signed from Vitoria in 2007, has played mostly at left-back for Benfica this season, his more natural position is in central defence where his fine technical ability gives him the ability to advance into attacking positions with the ball and distribute well. He is also known for his aerial ability at corners.
The Portuguese media have been astonished by Dunga's unwillingness to select Luiz for Brazil but his rate of development suggests that he has the potential to become one of the best central defenders in the world. Luiz would certainly offer a foil to Jerome Boateng, who is more of a stopper, if the German defender's expected £11m move from Hamburg is completed. But he would be equally useful to Mancini as a full-back, given that Boateng, Vincent Kompany and Joleon Lescott could meet City's requirements in central defence.
Martin Petrov, who is out of contract at City, is very likely to leave this summer though the future of Sylvinho, who is in the same position, is less clear.
Meanwhile, Gianluigi Buffon's agent has dismissed suggestions that the player might be leaving Juventus, with both City and Manchester United having been linked with the Italy goalkeeper. Silvano Martina said: "Considering the ongoing reports, I want to remind everyone that Buffon is under contract with Juve and that next season he will play at Juve. When he was asked hypothetically where he would want to play if he left Juve, he always said his first choice would be England, but there is nothing else."
Manchester City to offer Patrick Vieira new deal until the end of next season
Manchester City are expected to offer a 12-month contract extension to Patrick Vieira to keep him at Eastlands until the end of next season.
Vieira, 33, arrived on a free transfer in January on a six-month deal and although he started just eight games, manager Roberto Mancini was impressed by his form towards the end of the season.
Talks between Vieira and Garry Cook, City’s chief executive, have not yet begun but the player is settled in Manchester. Although he missed out on one of his principal objectives when moving to Eastlands — a place in France’s World Cup squad — it is thought he may be prepared to take a further reduction in his wages to ensure he remains at the club.
Tévez can 'be best player in the world' He may be joined at Manchester City by Yoann Gourcuff, the Bordeaux attacking midfielder who is a central figure in France coach Raymond Domenech’s plans this summer.
Gourcuff has impressed at the Stade Chaban-Delmas since returning to his homeland after an unhappy spell at AC Milan, helping Laurent Blanc’s team to the quarter-finals of the Champions League.
City may have to spend as much as £21million to land the 23 year-old.
Meanwhile, City are thought to be among the clubs interested in signing Everton’s Mikel Arteta.
The Spanish midfielder’s agent, Inaki Ibanez, insisted on Wednesday that his client is happy at Goodison Park amid suggestions he may be targeted as a replacement for Cesc Fabregas at Arsenal. Everton are determined to resist any attempts to poach one of the club’s key assets.
Relations between Everton and City remain strained after Joleon Lescott’s transfer last summer, as well as the touchline clash between David Moyes and Mancini when the two sides met in the Premier League in March.
Barcelona are preparing to launch a £70m bid for Liverpool's Fernando Torres after signing David Villa, his strike partner in Spain's national side, from Valencia. Daily Mirror
However, the Catalan side's hopes of luring Cesc Fabregas from Arsenal to the Nou Camp could be hit by Yaya Toure's reluctance to move in the opposite direction. The Ivory Coast midfielder is said to be attracting the interest of Manchester City. Daily Mail
Barca have decided they will not pay more than £30m for Fabregas, which could also put the deal at risk. Daily Star
Arsenal are looking for £80m before they allow their talismanic skipper to return to his former club. Daily Mail
Gunners manager Arsene Wenger is actually hopeful of persuading midfielder Fabregas to stay for one more season. Daily Mirror
However, should Fabregas leave, Arsenal can forget plans to replace him with Mikel Arteta, according to the Everton midfielder's agent. Manchester United have also been linked with a move for Arteta. the Sun
Manchester United are planning a £15m bid for Everton midfielder Jack Rodwell despite Toffees boss David Moyes saying the 19-year-old is not for sale. the Sun
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