Big transfer rumor: Angel Di Maria

Reliable Duncan Castles says City is interested in Di Maria. While Simon Mullock from Mirror claims that Di Maria was offered, but we passed him on earlier.

Few key points:

Tactical:

City lack a left sided winger. Ideally, City would like to replace Navas with Di Maria. It would mean keeping all 4 ST's to account for injury prone (Aguero/Jovetic) and inconsistent (Dzeko/Negredo) players and also getting an upgrade on a wide player. But it’s not an ideal world & it’s Negredo who's willingness to leave is in headlines, just months after being shot down by City hierarchy.

Question 1: Is Pellegrini comfortable with 3 ST’s in squad when he wants to deploy 2 ST’s regularly in maximum number of games? Or will he veto any sale of Negredo?

Question 2: Pellegrini prefers interiors - is he comfortable to play Di Maria on a regular basis? (What’s a top manager who is not ready to change?!)

Transfer Fee:

Reported price by Duncan Castles as €80M. First impression: Too high even for such a brilliant player.

City can realistically raise cash of €68M. Does City have enough? I guess City can engineer a smart deal to counter a gap of €12M.

Player	Fee (Actual/minimum expected)
Javi Garcia	£12M
Rodwell	£10M
Gareth Barry	£2M
Sub-Total	£24M
Negredo	£18M
Nastasic	£12M
Total	£54M (= €68M)
*Fees for Micah, Sinclair & GUidetti not included as City finding it difficult to find buyers for them. If & when sold, will be additional cash raised.

Wage:

Di Maria’s present wage = €3.5M (post tax).

Similar wage in PL & City would have to pay (€7M pre tax) = £110K.

Compare to top earners/players at City: VK, Silva, Kun = £120K, £140K, £150K.

City hierarchy won’t have sleepless nights to pay this wage (basic) to a player like Di Maria.

But with desperate situation at MUFC, they can offer a huge wage to Di Maria. It could come down to Di Maria’s preference over the two clubs.

Who starts in XI?

Di Maria won’t join to fight for his place. Silva, Nasri, Jovetic, Aguero, Dzeko, DiMaria, Navas – who plays as first choice, who gets dropped?

Champions League conundrum:

Makes sense to drop Navas & take Di Maria to CL.

Verdict:

Expensively prohibitive.

Txiki & Pellegrini have shown no willingness to go after "unplanned" signings, yet.

Difficult to close in dying moments for transfer window, but Mesut Ozil's do happen.