Mark Hughes will be busier than most in January, that is if of course you believe everything you read!

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Sunday Mirror Sport revealed last week that City want Bayern Munich’s Franck Ribery – and the message they have received is that the Frenchman wants to talk despite the German club’s reluctance to sell.
There will also be departures at Eastlands in the New Year, with Brazilian playmaker Elano and defender Nedum Onuoha leading the way.
Elano was being lined up for a loan move to Espanyol before the Spanish club sacked coach Bartolome Marquez.
Espanyol are waiting for new boss Mane to decide whether they should accept a deal which would see an initial loan deal with view to a permanent £6m transfer in the summer.
England Under-21 international Onuoha may be used as a makeweight in the £15m deal with Blackburn for Santa Cruz. Aston Villa are also monitoring £4mrated Onuhoa, who returned from injury during the week.
Diarra is also close to full fitness and City will pay cash-strapped Pompey £18m to land the former Arsenal midfielder. (Daily Mirror)

It is of course hard to separate the legitimate transfer dealings from the downright fictional rumours associated with the Eastlands outfit but the players mentioned by this source are at least partly seemingly based in reality. The likes of Roque Santa Cruz and Lassana Diarra do seem fairly close to making their moves from Blackburn Rovers and Portsmouth respectively and the chances of unhappy Brazilian Elano leaving seem pretty high and Onuoha being used as a makeweight to help Paul Ince’s leaky defence seem plausible. Franck Ribery is the one player mentioned in this report that could be a shaky proposition. The French talent has been a big hit in the Bundesliga so it may be down to whether he wants to earn a megabucks contract with a team who could well be moving in the right direction as opposed to sticking with the Champions League challengers Bayern Munich, this could well be a tough call but maybe Ribery would want to see some more truly big names join the club before he opted for such a deal. Of the players mentioned in this round up who would Manchester City fans most like to see join and which would they like to see stay?

Brand New Feature. (1-10 scale, One = Pure make believe, Ten = is a transfer all but complete)

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