'Worried' Mancini hits out at City board

SOCCER:ROBERTO MANCINI has renewed his criticisms of the Manchester City board, describing himself as "worried" because of the club's inability to conclude their transfer business earlier.

Samir Nasri’s proposed transfer from Arsenal would again establish City as the biggest transfer-window spenders in English football, with a net spend in excess of €68m. Mancini, however, is becoming increasingly impatient with the time it is taking for his squad to be completed.

The Italian had expected Nasri to be confirmed before yesterday’s registration point to play against Swansea on Monday, and he still wants at least one more signing. “Last year was the same too,” he said. “I don’t understand this. I thought we could get all the players we needed three or four weeks ago. But here we are and the deals aren’t closed.

“We need this player (Nasri). I’m worried because I don’t have this player today and I probably won’t have him tomorrow. We play three games in August and I am worried.”

The Nasri deal, expected to be finalised on Monday, has been held up because the clubs are arguing about the structure of the payments for a deal that would cost City in the region of €26m.

It has been a complex process – Arsenal began the summer by stating unequivocally that Nasri would not be sold to an English rival – and the fact the London club are now willing to sell could be construed as a personal triumph for the City chief executive, Garry Cook, and the football administrator, Brian Marwood. But Mancini’s relationship with the two men has been fractious at times over the summer and he remains unsatisfied.

“I haven’t spoken with Garry or Brian, so I don’t know the situation,” Mancini continued. “I hope that we can get the players I asked for two months ago.

“Monday is the start of the season for us and we have not completed our team. I hope we can do this very quickly because we need other players.”

Alex Ferguson has said Manchester United will not go back into the transfer market before the end of the month, declaring “you can forget” the idea of Wesley Sneijder signing and masking any sense of disappointment by placing his trust in the emerging young players at Old Trafford.

Ferguson had made signing a new central midfielder a priority this summer but the champions are resigned to Nasri joining Manchester City and have let it be known that exploratory talks about Sneijder’s availability at Inter have amounted to nothing.

United’s stance is that the Sneijder deal is now finished and Ferguson insisted he is happy to begin the season with his current squad. and, as well as highlighting Tom Cleverley’s impressive performance in the Community Shield, he reiterated his faith in Michael Carrick, Anderson and Darren Fletcher and talked about promoting the 18-year-old Paul Pogba to the senior team.

“When you take that roll call of players, I’m certainly not looking to add to that,” the United manager said. “I’ve been saying that for weeks but you (the media) have all been writing differently – that I’m going to buy this one or that one. But we’ve said nothing, we just carry on with our business.”

Elsewhere, Liverpool took their summer spending to €62 million yesterday with the €6.8 million signing of Jose Enrique from Newcastle United. The Spanish left-back is in the squad for the Premier League opener against Sunderland and could be joined by Luis Suarez, despite the Uruguay striker returning to training only on Monday after his victorious efforts at the Copa America. “I’m not saying Luis is going to start but he feels fine and he’s trained well. He doesn’t have a problem,” manager Kenny Dalglish said.

Jose Enrique trained with his new team-mates for the first time yesterday and showed he is not yet on message with a Liverpool manager who has refused to declare a target for this campaign. “My ambition is win everything with Liverpool,” said the club’s fifth signing of the summer. “This year we won’t play in the Champions League, so the most important thing is to try to win the league.”

The manager enters his first full season at the club for 21 years adamant that its sense of ambition has returned. “The squad is a lot stronger, not only in terms of strength in depth but in terms of the quality,” he said. “I know we are under scrutiny . . . but the desire to be successful hasn’t changed. It is an exciting time.”