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City to beat Liverpool to Spanish Starlet?

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The Daily Mail are reporting that Manchester City are considering bidding for highly rated 21 year old Athletic Bilbao midfielder Javi Martinez. Liverpool have been linked with the player in the past but City have apparently been monitoring the player’s progress over the last few months, according to the paper. Scouts have collated an extensive portfolio on the player including his style of player, personality and background, and they were in Austria on Saturday to watch Martinez make his debut for Spain against Saudi Arabia after he came on as a substitute for Xavi. A tall, capable midfielder, the young Basque is rated by Bilbao at £18million, small money to City but an asking price which would rule out any move from Liverpool. Rafa Benitez has monitored the player for some time but they would not be able to compete with City’s financial clout.

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4 comments

  • jim says:

    Just the sort of player we need, go get him rafa…

  • Eric says:

    If this is one of Rafa´s vision to take the club forward then he can b***er off. Someone must tell him about the “6+5” rule being forced upon teams in 1-2 years time, and this aint the correct player. We need to be spending money on the domestic players which the big teams are offloading as they are going spending nuts with all their money. Man City has at least 4-5 players we should be going for. In fact, Bellamy should never have left Liverpool.

  • Greg says:

    Um, the article says it’s City who are chasing him, not us. We looked at him last year as an Alonso replacement, but he was too young then. City’s technique in the transfer market seems to be to try to sign anyone who us or any of the other traditional big clubs have looked at, so no surprises if they sign Martinez up.
    Oh and Eric, we sold Bellamy (along with Cisse and Garcia) to get the money to buy Torres. Are you sure we should never have let him leave?

  • Harry says:

    Eric, I’m pretty sure Rafa Benitez knows about the “6+5” rule.

    Has it escaped your attention that recent signings like Jonjo Shelvey, Raheem Sterling, etc are English?

    Or that when the best English right-back came on the market last summer Benitez made sure that he snapped him up ahead of rival bids from Chelsea and Manchester City?

    When it comes to the “6+5” rule Liverpool are moving in the right direction.

    By the way, the “big teams” aren’t offloading their players, and certainly not the ones that fall the right side of the new rule, because it applies to them just as much as it applies to Liverpool.

    Oh, and I’ll second Greg’s assessment that selling Craig Bellamy (for a profit) to raise the money to buy Fernando Torres was the right decision!

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