• £200m worth of talent likely to be available for transfer

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Sport

Football

Manchester City

Ecstasy or not, the exodus will follow at Manchester City

• £200m worth of talent likely to be available for transfer

• But Roberto Mancini declines to look beyond final match

The Observer, Sunday 13 May 2012

Carlos Tevez and Edin Dzeko

Carlos Tevez, right, and Edin Dzeko are among the Manchester City players likely to be made available for transfer this summer. Photograph: Alex Livesey/Getty Images

If Queens Park Rangers are beaten this afternoon at the Etihad Stadium, one notable coda could be the exit of a gang of Manchester City players who helped push the club over the line to the title.

In a fire sale unprecedented in this and any other league around £200m worth of City talent will be up for grabs this summer. Add the salaries of the 11 players in question and more than a quarter of a billion pounds of Sheikh Mansour's investment could walk out of the door.

The snapshot at Eastlands commemorating The Way They Were would have Carlos Tevez (cost, £47m), Edin Dzeko (£27m), Mario Balotelli (£24m), Aleksandar Kolarov (£19m), Kolo Touré (£16m), Adam Johnson (£7m), Stefan Savic (£6m) and David Pizarro (free) in the frame as Roberto Mancini continues to strengthen a squad whose next challenge will be conquering Europe.

Already the talk around Eastlands is of the quest for long-term domination of English football, should the 44-year championship hoodoo be broken today. "I don't know," Mancini says. "Manchester City now is one of the top teams in England and Europe. After, if Manchester City can win the title for three or four years, it is possible. Now, I don't know. It's important to win the first, and the second afterwards."

City's sale of the century will definitely include three loanees for whom they paid a combined £54.5m. These are Emmanuel Adebayor, currently at Tottenham Hotspur and who cost City £25m from Arsenal, Wayne Bridge (at Sunderland, who cost £12m), and Roque Santa Cruz (at Real Betis, who cost £17.5m).

While City may not part with all of this Etihad XI, or expect to recoup the full £200.5m outlay, even a 50% return would yield £100m as Mancini looks to recruit for next season and City attempt to fall in line with Uefa's stringent financial fair play rules.

For varying reasons Mancini will find some of his unwanted personnel harder to trade than others. The head coaches of Milan, Inter, Paris St-Germain, Barcelona and Real Madrid all gaze admiringly at Tevez, the most prominent of the potential departees. They see a proven performer who has supplied vital goals also at West Ham and Manchester United. But the sticking point could well prove to be a £250,000-a-week salary and the effort of coping with an individual temperament which led to him downing tools for six months following his touchline dispute with Mancini in Munich.

Whether any elite club can finally strike a deal to take Tevez from City could be a summer saga to repeat last year's on-off move to Corinthians, which was followed up by his January dalliance with Milan, Inter and PSG. The stumbling block has been City's insistence that £25m is the price for the Argentinian. But Chelsea, say, may assess how Tevez finished the season with four goals (so far), while looking sharp and refreshed after his prolonged hiatus.

Of Balotelli the noises coming from both Mancini and the Italian forward are that he will stay in Manchester. Yet as his antics this season illustrate, Balotelli is unpredictable and, if a sizeable offer is lodged, Mancini may decide to cut his losses on a player who has been a constant source of headaches since his arrival two years ago.

Mancini is certainly seeking at least one new striker, whether Balotelli leaves or not, with Arsenal's potent Robin van Persie his first choice. Dzeko – 15 goals in 44 league appearances – has proved one-paced and Adebayor is another player to have fallen out with Mancini. Spurs may be interested in making the Togolese's move permanent, though his £170,000-a-week salary is a demand even ambitious Tottenham may balk at.

Of the rest Kolarov is now the third-choice left-back behind Gaël Clichy and Pablo Zabaleta; Kolo Touré is relatively old at 31; Johnson, 24, has potential but may leave to improve on only 10 league starts this season; Savic appears out of his depth; Pizarro was always a short-term solution to fill in for the unfit Owen Hargreaves; while Bridge and Santa Cruz have been surplus to requirements for at least a season now.

Mancini is understandably reluctant to discuss the shape of next season's squad with the title still not in the bag. "To talk about next season is too early now," he says. "It is better to talk only about the next two days. Next season we have time to talk about everything. But we have good players, I don't know what will happen over the next two months. For me, they can all stay."

Mancini was speaking two days before City's biggest game for nearly 50 years, against Queens Park Rangers this afternoon, and in a manner to protect team spirit for the season's final challenge. In reality the club is preparing for an exodus of all the loanees on its books and many of today's match-day squad who hope to help City to a first league championship since 1968.

[LordCarson 2]

Amazing how we would kill for those players and Man City can just cast them off as rejects!

[alstone 374]

I would get tevez and baloteli to fuck straight away, they are disruptive arseholes who dont deserve to be there! RVP should be main priority for them - having silva RVP and aguero as their main attackers would put them in contention for the CL next season!! I rate kolarov adam jonson nasri and dzeko and would keep them all on as rotation players at very least, will be interesting to see what happens thoyugh!! wouldnt change much in defence they prob have the best CB in the country with kompany. A bright future for them, i just hope man utd can keep up

[skinnymate1690 780]

Adam Johnson should be starting for city IMO , very underrated

[alstone 374]

Adam Johnson should be starting for city IMO , very underrated

agreed

[pennyarcade 42]

How can he say they are one of the top teams in Europe? His team got fucked in both euro competitions.

[Gazzalivesforever 2,038]

I actually forgot Pizarro went to city. Has he even played?

[BillyBoy11 63]

Adam Johnson should be starting for city IMO , very underrated

Like him alot, always have done. City will ruin him. He should go to a spurs or arsenal where he will challenge for trophies but play every week.

But hes not good enough for a Prem winning team with ambitions of winning the CL IMO.

[Nemesis 277]

City paid over the odds in order to get it all kickstarted.

They knew that needed to be done.

Now we will see the transformation.

If they get Hazard a 'foot on the ball' midfield maestro as well as a proper partner for Kompany they may well take some stopping

[Clemdog 39,389]

I thought this was about Sellick's CL team being up for sale

[pcbear 10,932]

I heard some pleb on Talksport talking about Man City's world domination of football, what a load of old tosh.

[AGM_72 4,060]

Dzeko's a quality player but he needs to play week in and week out to have a proper impact. It will never work like that for him at City.

[MasterD 7,457]

£200m of talent which is only really worth half of that.

[Scott-RFC 308]

Adam Johnson always looks good when he comes on as a sub, but hes never impressed me when he gets a start