Hughes to bring Roque Santa Cruz & David Bentley to City By David McDonnell 3/06/2008

Mark Hughes will try to bring David Bentley and Roque Santa Cruz with him when he leaves Blackburn to take over at Manchester City.

Hughes is City's No.1 choice to take over from Sven Goran Eriksson, whose expected sacking was confirmed yesterday after just one season.

Blackburn will demand around £5million compensation for Hughes, who has three years left on his Rovers contract, and City hope to announce him as their new boss this week.

Once Hughes is installed as City boss, one of his first acts will be to try to persuade England midfielder Bentley and prolific goal-scorer Santa Cruz to move with him.

City tried to sign Santa Cruz last summer but were beaten to his capture by Blackburn, while £10m-rated Bentley has emerged as one of the country's most impressive midfield talents.
Blackburn have given Hughes permission to talk to City, who went cold on their original first-choice target, Portugal boss and former Brazil World Cup-winning coach Luiz Felipe Scolari.

Although City have also sounded out former Barcelona boss Frank Rijkaard and ex-Inter Milan coach Roberto Mancini, Hughes remains their favoured choice. But there are fears among senior figures at City that Hughes is using their approach for him as a way of gauging the level of interest from Chelsea.
The Stamford Bridge club have made preliminary approaches to Scolari, Rijkaard, Mancini and Hughes, but the latter is said to have little chance of the job, with owner Roman Abramovich favouring a foreign appointment.

After almost four years at Blackburn, during which time he has led them to successive top seven finishes, Hughes felt the time has come to move on.

He was the domestic frontrunner last summer when City were looking for a new boss to replace Stuart Pearce, but Shinawatra opted instead for a foreign coach in Eriksson.

Shinawatra and his Thai cohorts have been impressed at the results Hughes has achieved on limited funds at Blackburn and he will have a transfer budget of about £40m available to him.
Former Thai PM Shinawatra has stated his ambition to take City into the Champions League by the end of the 2009-10 season.

Eriksson's deal, which had two years left to run, was terminated.

He will receive £1.5m compensation and was last night in Mexico where he is expected to take up the £4m offer to coach them through to the end of the 2010 World Cup.