Villa talks held

VALENCIA vice-president Fernando Gomez has confirmed they have held talks with Manchester City regarding the possible transfer of star striker David Villa.

The Spanish club are in deep financial trouble and admitted for the first time last week that they may need to cash in on some of their prized assets in a bid to ease their problems.

Spain international Villa, who is arguably the club's most valuable player, penned a six-year contract with Valencia only last August, tying the 27-year-old to Los Che until 2014, but it now seems the Primera Liga outfit are resigning themselves to him leaving.

>>MEN.

This could be very interesting.

It is no surprise that Valencia are in dire financial straits, and the likelihood is their biggest creditors are likely to insist on a fire-sale to recoup money that is owed.

Previously though, Villa has not indicated any desire to head to the Premier League and it is likely his preference would be for a move to either Real Madrid or Barcelona.

However, our financial muscle would allow to (considerably) outbid either of those clubs and it was suggested by Sid Lowe on the Football Weekly podcast that it wasn't inconceivable that Valencia could even go out of business.

Which, if a move comes solely down to money, we are very much in the box seat.

The price for Villa

£120 million according to this report in The Telegraph.

I know since the takeover we are armed with an unlimited pot of gold which effectively renders transfer fees irrelevant, but if we were to spend this amount to land Villa we would be more than doubling the previous record transfer fee.

As good a player as Villa is, is paying this type of fee to land him (or any player for that matter) really something that we want to see?

Villa time

Valencia are cash strapped and have admitted that their star player will have to go in January, despite Villa signing a contract extension that runs until 2014 just six months ago.

It is understood that the deal, worth an estimated £160,000-a-week, could be completed as early as Friday.

>>telegraph.co.uk

I think there has been enough substance around this story to suggest there may be more to it than the the di Natale link, but reports of a deal being completed as early as Friday strike as premature.

With reports of £160,000 a week and £100 million release fee clause, whilst the transfer amount may not cause a ripple in the owners pockets, Villa's wages may cause one or two knocks on Mark Hughes's door from the current squad.

City 0 Valencia 1

CITY failed their Spanish inquisition but as far as
Sven-Goran Eriksson is concerned, their pre-season ended on a positive note.A
10th minute goal from Silva, courtesy of mistakes from Gelson Fernandes and
Kasper Schmeichel, was enough to see the Thomas Cook Trophy winging its way back
to the Costa del Azahar.The Blues did hit the bar twice but were never able to
dominate the Champions League hopefuls who left their superstar David Villa on
the bench.Even so Eriksson was far from downcast."We matched Valencia, one of
the best teams in Europe. I thought we played as well as they did and created
more chances than them," he observed though the pace of the game was hardly that
of a full-blooded encounter."We had five new players out there, two of them have
not played for us at all in pre-season and don't speak English, so if you take
that into consideration then it was good."

-MEN match report.

I was away cricketing at the weekend so wasn't at the game but from media reports and (probably more accurately) first-hand reports from people I know who went it suggested that it was very much as expected with it being a bit hit and miss with the side having barely played together at all, so the overall result is far less important than the fact the players had (albeit brief) time to gel.

A shame we haven't got another pre-season coming up this midweek to give futher opportunity prior to the opening day game at West Ham - perhaps one plus being that they are also a side who have picked up a fair amount of new players close to the start of the season.

Looking round on YouTube, it seems DPercussion wasn't the only succesful event held in the city last Saturday: