Adebayor & Santa Cruz on their way as Manchester City's much- needed summer clear- out begins

Sergio Aguero's winner in the
95th minute against QPR on the
last day of the season has had
further reaching effects than just
sealing a maiden title. Like the
dealer in a game of Texas
Hold'em, it has given City the
power to watch their rivals act
first. As Manchester United play
catch-up, moving for Shinji
Kagawa and Nick Powell, and
Arsenal add fire-power in Lukas
Podolski and Olivier Giroud, the
decision-makers at City are
biding their time.
It has been a long time coming
for a club that looked to have
more money than sense at times.
The crazed obsession with
overhauling United's dominance
of the domestic scene mutated
from mere on-pitch duals to
billboard jibes led by former Red
Devil Carlos Tevez. It has been
unrepentant and dogged, but
City have reached the goal.
So what now? The old idiom
says that if you throw enough
mud at the wall, some of it will
stick. And only by looking at
Roberto Mancini's transfer
market moves can we really
assess just how much mud has
been thrown at his squad.
The club have sensibly decided
to offload the deadwood in the
squad before pressing ahead
with reinforcements – surely
with an eye on the incoming
Financial Fair Play (FFP)
regulations. Emmanuel Adebayor
and Roque Santa Cruz are
expected to be ushered out of
the door following Wayne
Bridge, Stuart Taylor and Owen
Hargreaves to different climes.
The Togolese striker has spent
the last two years on loan at Real
Madrid and Tottenham,
respectively, and as Harry
Redknapp said at the end of the
season: “They [City] don't want
him. They don't want to see him
ever again."
The club's relationship with
Santa Cruz may not be as hostile
but the logic remains: Mancini
has the opportunity this summer
to fine-tune his squad, to mould
it into an efficient, title-winning
behemoth.
It doesn't stop with the two
strikers (though that is certainly
more pressing) as players like
Aleksander Kolarov and Stefan
Savic will be wondering if their
salaries make up for a lack of
minutes on the pitch. This is the
perennial dilemma squad players
at the top clubs are subjected to;
those in the bracket below
'world-class' - Nigel de Jong,
Adam Johnson and James Milner
- are all further examples. These
concerns will in all likelihood be
postponed for another year or
two because, well, who doesn't
like being part of a successful
organisation and getting paid
enormous amounts of cash?
For the time being, it is the
excess fat that needs to be
trimmed from the squad and
that explains City's
determination to sell Adebayor
and Santa Cruz before moving
for an additional goalscorer. Of
course, with the news that Robin
van Persie will not renew his
contract at Arsenal, the inevitable
link has been made between the
Abu Dhabi group's billions and
the Dutchman.