The Torres and Boateng plans

There are very broadly speaking two transfer plans for this summer. One is for the brightest of stars, the galácticos, or those we could tempt to play for City. The other is to sign younger, hungrier players, less famous but not too far behind in terms of ability. Both of these plans are embodied by high profile and strongly desired players. The former by Fernando Torres, the latter by Jérôme Boateng. I know which policy I prefer. We are more likely to succeed in the long term with ambitious players with careers ahead of them: signings along the lines of Pablo Zabaleta, Vincent Kompany, Nigel de Jong - or, from Chelsea's time, Arjen Robben, Petr Čech and Michael Essien. Signing expensive established stars is both fairly vulgar and no guarantee of success.

Fortunately from my point of view, or failure to qualify for the Champions League football might preclude our pursuing 'the Torres strategy' this season. Mancini spoke of our pursuit of El Niño today:

"Can we attract the top, top players, like Torres? I don't know, but I don't think so," he said in The Sun.

"If we finished in the top four, it would be better and easier to attract them.

"In this situation it is different. There are probably some players who want to play in the Champions League and not in the Europa League."

I imagine this is representative of our pursuit of many other players in a similar bracket. The names are omnipresent, but I am sure we will go for - at the least - David Villa, Steven Gerrard, Joe Cole, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Gonzalo Higuaín. None of these I imagine will now join us. And, to be frank, if they do then we need to ask serious and legitimate questions about their motivation. So I imagine we will switch focus to other targets. Targets like 21 year old HSV defender Jérôme Boateng. This deal is understood to be done, and Mancini said today:

“Boateng is a good player, a young player and strong. He plays for the national team and we have a good chance to get him.

“We are quite close to signing him.”

“He can play central defender, right defender, or in the middle, three different positions. If we find a player like that, who can play in two or three different positions, it is better for us.

“Next year we will play in four different competitions, which means playing every three days, so we need those players who can play in a few different positions.”

There's not really much more to say. This looks certain to happen. And once we've got him we need to go for a goal-scoring midfielder, a competent left back and maybe another centre forward. But I'll write more about transfer policy in due course.

More on Torres

Roberto Mancini's Thursday press briefing clearly shed more light on our planned summer move for Fernando Torres than first thought:

"We are a top team and I think all the top teams are interested in Torres but sometimes it depends on the player because they want to play in the Champions League," he said. "If we don't get into the fourth position I think it will be difficult."

Explaining his reasons for identifying Torres, Mancini said: "For me, he is with Carlos [Tevez], [Wayne] Rooney, [Lionel] Messi, [Zlatan] Ibrahimovic, [Cristiano] Ronaldo as the best in Europe. Fernando is a fantastic striker; all the teams in Europe would like him"...

Asked if City had an advantage over Torres's other suitors, Mancini replied. "Probably."

Well it's absolutely clear that, if we get into the Champions League, this is Target Number 1. It's worth repeating that if we don't finish fourth then all bets are off, and we can talk about our moves for whichever strikers have managed seventeen or eighteen goals in Serie A or Ligue 1. But while we're still in the hunt this remains live. And an interesting feature of the reports in Friday's newspapers is that they all carry what looks like briefed information from the club on Torres' interest:

When City looked into his potential availability last summer the message from Torres's representatives was that the Spain international was not interested. That, however, changed to a "maybe" when the same calls were made in January and senior officials from Eastlands have been back in touch over the past fortnight.

Of course the move really hinges on Torres' enthusiasm. There's no doubt that if Torres wanted to move that we could agree a fee with Liverpool. So if the club hears from Torres' camp of a flicker of interest then that's good news. But our failed moves for Kaká, Samuel Eto'o and John Terry presumably all started with those players' agents telling Garry Cook that they might be interested, and in fact were sustained by further promises of interest.

If I had to make a prediction now I'd say that we won't get fourth so this will all go away. But if we do, I still can't see Torres joining us. I think his loyalty to Liverpool is too strong. I'd love to be proved wrong. But we'll see.

Mancini on Torres

The manager has responded to speculation about a move for Liverpool's Fernando Torres:

“Fernando Torres is a fantastic striker,” said Mancini.

“But all the teams in Europe are interested in him.

“We must get the rest of the matches out of the way first, then we will decide about other players...

“All the top players want to play in the Champions League,” added Mancini.

“Next year we want to be a team who wins the Premier League. To do that we need top players.”

This is a pretty clear admission of the truth in the 'two lists' report: that we have a set of players we will target if we are playing Champions League football next year, and a set if we are playing Europa League. It makes perfect sense. We've looked fairly silly in the past by throwing ourselves at Champions League level players armed with only sacks of cash and vague promises of success. John Terry, Samuel Eto'o, and Kaká all thought very carefully about joining before deciding against it. (None have played that well since making that decision but that's another story.)

If we're in the Champions League this changes. The combination of a place in Europe's elite competition, plus the six figures a week minimum that we pay would bring a different calibre of footballer to Eastlands next season. Whether or not Torres would be such a player depends on his own loyalty to Liverpool more than anything else, but players of roughly his level could certainly be convinced.

But as it stands I think we're just going to miss out on Champions League football. Which means that plans for Torres and Milner can be junked. We will still be able to attract good players - like Jérôme Boateng - to supplement our squad. But the idea of being able to turn our squad into 2010/11 Premier League title contenders armed with Europa League level recruits sounds a bit far-fetched.