CITY are ready to battle neighbours Bolton for the services of Dietmar Hamann as well as Quinton Fortune.
And Blues' boss Stuart Pearce is on the brink of adding French teenager Samir Nasri to his list of fresh faces at Carrington.
Pearce flew back from television work and scouting at the World Cup earlier this week to outline his latest transfer plans to City's top brass and to try and move some deals forward.
He has already made an offer to 29-year-old former United midfielder Fortune and is waiting for an answer that should come early next week.
Neighbours Bolton are also interested in the experienced South African international - who turned down Celtic this week - as well as Liverpool's German anchorman Hamann, who is available for around é500,000.
If Fortune chooses Wanderers, then Pearce will intensify his chase for the 33-year-old Hamann and visa-versa.
Education
Nasri, meanwhile, is at the other end of the age scale having played for the best part of two seasons at his hometown club Marseille.
The midfielder started 14 games last season for the top French side and has plenty of UEFA Cup experience. Marseille are willing to let him leave on a 12-month loan to further his footballing education.
Although an attack-minded player, Nasri does not have a great scoring record having managed just two in the last two seasons.
He is, however, highly regarded in his home country having shot to prominence two years ago when he scored France's winning goal in the European Under 17s final. The first time ever they had won that trophy.
Pearce, who along with his coaching staff and scouts has watched the player in action, sees Nasri as competition for the likes of Stephen Ireland, who started 16 league and cup games last term for the Blues but faded out of the first team picture at the back end of the campaign.
Is City's squad going to be strong enough to survive the Premiership? Have your say.
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Only if we add at least another 4 players to it! Glad to see we are 'supposedly' in for the likes of Hamann/Malbranque/Gravesen though - if we don't get them fair enough, but at least we know SP is looking at the sort of players we all agree are needed. Badly need to sign some of them up though or next season could be a very long one indeed!!
what does visa versa mean?
most of the stories on this website are about players city have missed out on. Except we snapped up Dickov.
cheers
s
Survive???, nice to see the MEN backing the Manchester team. . . .
A top 10 finish should be no problem
Hamann - yes
Fortune - No
At least SP is in Germany gettign a good look at some players. Wonder if he watches any trainign sessions?
Well, for the first time this summer i actually believe we could be getting closer to signing players, which has to be a positive. Hamaan would be my pick out the 3, experience, quality and battling attributes give us the Bosvelt figure we missed against those scrappy games against the likes of Bolton etc. As for Nasri, if liverpool were interested he has to be good enough for us! Fortune, a very versatile player with a lot of qualities, just hope he can keep fit if we sign him. Then again, we'll probably end up getting no-one, typical city.
Good God! Are we really asking questions about whether we're going to SURVIVE next season? Don't you think by this stage we ought to be asking whether we can make it into Europe?
Dont know about strong enough,but it will be a team of geriatrics and has-beens if we get hamann and fortune.
Stephen Ireland, who started 16 league and cup games last term for the Blues but faded out of the first team picture at the back end of the campaign.
HE WAS INJURED. GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT!
No
Never mind if we dont get Fortune then he'll go for Hamann,Hamann should be the priority signing.I appreciate were looking more and more like a retirement home but Hamann will add much needed quality and know how to a presently woeful midfield.Take a chance on the kid and forget Fortune.Also i hope the rumoured move for Postiga is just agent talk.
Is City??<sup>TM</sup>s squad strong enough to survive? Is that a stupid question? City need at least 8 quality players in. Not freebies who no other club wants. Not permacrocks. The club is gearing for relegation. Why bring in Nasri to compete with Ireland? Is this a competition to see who can be the 5th sub? Look at what might happen and ask these questions. Barton or Hamman? Fortune, Riera or Kiki? Nasri or Ireland? Is this improving a squad which lost 10 out of the last 11? I don??<sup>TM</sup>t think it is. You are a joke Pearce. You were famous for missing a penalty (a loser) and now you are bringing the loser mentality to City. You have no spine to stand up to the board and demand money because you know you??<sup>TM</sup>ve been given the chance to manage a big club on its arse and no other Chairman with any sense would appoint you. You were given the job because no other manager would take it as the team needs a serious cash injection. I wish you??<sup>TM</sup>d got the England job just so you could prove me right on a national scale. People say you must be happy with Pearce? I laugh.You are taking us where you took Forest. Go now and take the board with you. That said, see you August guys.
WILL STRUGGLE ALL SEASON DOWN BY MARCH
Hamann is class and would do us a good short term job .... PROVIDING he has young players around him and not 30-34 year olds !
If this is the standard of player that City are going to be getting this summer, then we might as well prepare ourselves for Championship football in 2007-2008.
It is, to say the least, annoying to see that all the ground work put in by Bernstein and co, who put the club back on the right tracks,was thrown away by letting KK squander money, leaving us in a position now where we can't even compete with the likes of Wigan.
With his hands tied on the money front, SP will have to use all his motivational skills, to get the players he has at his disposal, to perform as a team!
Unfortunately the last 10 matches of last season do not bode well for the future.
Pearce is raking it in - he does adverts, tv commentary and a host of other things - no wonder we had a dire season with all his other commitments. Hammann and Fortune have good CVs but they are both after a big payday and i doubt their hearts will be in it especially after winning the Champions league. We all know what happens when former Liverpool players join us at the end of their careers
More of todays rumours include a 2m bid for D Murphy and interest from Charlton in Barton however the Everton link will not go away.Oh and surprise surprise Malbranque has resurfaced and its not even friday!
Fortune is injury prone, didn't play a match last year and is looking for a stepping stone before going to Celtic. Hamann is 33 and looking for one last pay day, he's probably the better player but why do we need another midfielder in the middle of the park when we already have Barton who wants to run down his last year, Reyna who's doing the same, Richards who was impressive in that position and Ireland who admittedly is a bit more attacking but also impressed at times. If we are after Hamann what would be the point of him coming apart from loading up the wage load in an area I can't see that we need strengthening only for him to probably leave himself in a year's time. If we are after a defensive midfielder please sign somebody for longer than a year otherwise we'll be looking for more than two defensive midfielders at this time next year.
at the present time,NO.we have needed midfielders for the past 2 years and we are still waiting!sp needs to add at least 5/6 players to the current squad (quality players)otherwise it could be a long,hard season.WARDLE & CO BACK THE MANAGER YOU APPOINTED!
iv put ??50 on city being relegated next season, guaranteed cash
hamman definatly but he'd probably choose bolton over us cos we are offering low wages to players....fortune is too injury prone...we need to buy 3 quality players or face relegation...the debt will be worse following relegation that it will to sign 3 quality players!
manc, manc. U have just lost ureself ??50, yeh city r bad at the minute and need new signings but ure being ridiculous in being certain we will go down!!! Ure pathetic probably a dirty red scum!! There will be worse teams than us nxt season i.e the three teams that have come up, charlton, portsmouth, aston villa!!! Stop being so negative, we probably wont finish in the top half but we certainly wont fet relegated!!!
I think Fortune will come to us now. Celtic will only give him a one year deal. We have offered 2 year. Also he would be crazy to turn down a chance of playing for a club with no other left midfielder in the squad. If he wants to play more football then surely his agent will point this out. As for Hamann. He may be old but he would give us something we need badly: a tackler, who can put his foot on the ball, pick out a pass, and provide a link between the defence and midfield. This last point may stop our defenders hoofing balls up the field. A player like Hamann would come back to receive the ball. And he is quite handy on long range free kicks !!
Nasri has only got his own website take a look.
http://www.samirnasri.fr/en/accueil.html
Newbrook, Canterbury just wondered mate if these were words you used the season before when we were a penaty away from europe i think that pearse is ok shame that the team cannt be assed to play with the motivation and courage that pearse possesed as a player and hopefully a manager.
We'll struggle next season but we can stay up. We need some bodies in and I think Fortune if he can prove his fitness would be a good signing. hamman would be excellent for us to add some much needed experience, class and discipline to a young scrappy midfield which could get short on numbers if Barton goes. It's already looking shy down the wings but we've been over that many times before. Fortune will help that and Nasri could be the cover we need though I'd rather have a third as well due to Fortune's injury record and Nasri only being a kid.
One more for the right and we'll be ok though obviously it's be great to see some more investement in the middle to complement Barton, Reyna, Hamman and Ireland. Bit of creativity please Pearcey.
And to the bloke that said SP must be raking it in with all the tv adverts. I've seen one for Carlsberg that probably took a day to film. The world cup gives him a chance to look at players so that's a working holiday... what's the problem here? It's not like he's spent more than a week not working for the club since he took the job. The results have let us down but give the guy a break. He was the best available option at the time given the budget we had and he'll get better and better.