Manchester City FC

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Citizens stand firm on Roque

04 Feb 2009 - 10:08:09

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Manchester City manager Mark Hughes has confirmed that his club were not prepared to raise their valuation of Roque Santa Cruz to sign the Blackburn Rovers striker.

The Citizens made several bids for the 27-year-old Paraguay international, but were unable to convince Rovers to part with one of their star performers.

Hughes told his club's official website: "The situation was that Blackburn were not prepared to sell their player.

"Their stance was that they did not have anybody to come in, they had apparently been trying to replace him but could not, so there was no deal to be done.

"If we had offered more money to a certain level it would have been done, which would have negated their argument to a certain extent, but we were not going to do that.

"We said all along that we had values for players and we were not going above them. They retained their player and they were well within their rights to do that.

"We wanted to bring a good player to Manchester City, our motivation in trying to do the deal was that we thought he could help us. But it has not happened, so we move on."