SVEN GORAN ERIKSSON is keeping his fingers crossed some of his eight new signings will turn out to be video stars at Manchester City. The former England boss has spent almost £40million of new owner Thaksin Shinawatra’s cash during the close season so far. Yet he admits he has not seen many of his captures play live and has been forced to rely on videos and the word of his pals.Over the past two days, he has brought in Brazilian midfielder Elano from Shakhtar Donetsk for £8million and Fiorentina’s Bulgarian forward Valeri Bojinov for around £6m, while Real Sociedad defender Javi Garrido has cost £1.5m and £4m Croatia defender Vedran Corluka has arrived from Dynamo Zagreb. Previously, he had splashed out £8.8.m on Reggina striker Rolando Bianchi, £4.7m for midfielder Martin Petrov from Atletico Madrid, paid an estimated £4.2m to net Switzerland Under-21 skipper Gelson Fernandes and landed Brazilian forward Geovanni on a free. It puts him firmly among the Premier League’s big spenders and last night Eriksson was poised to make Australian midfielder Mark Bresciano his next signing.
Bresciano, 27, plays for Italian side Palermo and has told them he is ready to join Sven’s revolution in a £3m deal. Eriksson has been racing against the clock to get new players in, as he was officially appointed only early last month. So he has been forced to take a gamble on some of the little-known foreigners — shelling out big money in the process.
The Swede admitted: “Most of the players I have never seen in action live. But it’s just not possible because the season has not even started. “I have seen videos of them though and I have checked them out with friends who have seen them play. A lot of them, the club scouts had seen before. “You can never be sure how players will do. But it is up to me and the coaches to get them ready. I am very confident they will do well. “I saw a lot of football during my break, yet I saw much less live football than I did in the previous five years. I sat at home and watched four or five games during the week.”
Eriksson owned up he did not really have targets in mind when he accepted the job at Eastlands, so has had to work hard to get deals done. He added: “I came to Manchester City very late. It all came about very quickly just two months ago. “That’s the first time anyone spoke to me about City, so I can’t say I had in my mind which kind of players would be suitable for the club. “So I had to work very quickly and find what we thought were the right players. But the world of agents must be a jungle. At the end, you don’t know who represents who. It has been a lot of work and phone calls. “My dream is to have eight defenders, eight midfielders and four strikers. That is what I am working towards.”
Questions have been raised about why the ex-England chief has not tried to sign home-based players. But Eriksson insisted he has tried — notably the likes of Leighton Baines and Peter Crouch — and claimed he has been priced out. He insisted: “If you try to go for the best players, the players in the England squad for instance, it’s very difficult to get them. “I promise you that I tried for maybe four and two of the clubs would not even discuss a price to sell. The other ones were very expensive. “We had some English names but clubs wouldn’t sell. There are a lot of good English players. I know that as I had another job until a year ago! But if we wanted to buy any of them, the price has gone over the roof.”
Eriksson has promised to try to keep a British spine running through his City side and is pleased with home-grown star like Micah Richards and Nedum Onuoha plus Irishmen Stephen Ireland and Richard Dunne. Eriksson said: “I don’t see us having a team of non-British players this season. We will have more than eight British players in the squad when the season starts and that’s almost half of them.”
His side host Valencia today and Eriksson revealed: “We are not ready for the season yet. How can we be ready with so little time to prepare? “We have another week though and hopefully will be ready by then.” Shinawatra has drawn up a three-year plan for his new boss, designed to see silverware won by 2010.
The one-time Thai PM said: “This season I feel we should be able to finish in the top 10. The second season we should be aiming for the top six and qualifying for Europe. “I accept that the first year is a learning curve, though we should start to be successful by the third. That is what I would expect.”
THE joke was on Sven Goran Eriksson yesterday, when he asked his new Bulgarian forward Valeri Bojinov at a Press conference: “Why did you want to join Manchester United?”
Red-faced Sven swiftly corrected his question to: “Why did you want to join Manchester City?” But not before those present had dissolved into laughter.
