Manchester City ready £100m bid for Kaka

Manchester City have finally entered the transfer market in force when it was revealed that they have opened talks with AC Milan about signing their Brazilian playmaker Kaka. The Eastlands club are widely reported to be preparing a bid that could reach £100m, while the 26-year-old former Fifa Player of the Year could take home a staggering £500,000 a week in wages.

Although AC Milan have announced that their transfer activity for the January window has ended, Manchester City will hope that a bid that would shatter the world record £46m paid by Real Madrid to Juventus for Zinedine Zidane in 2001 would force the Rossoneris' hand.

AC Milan's owner, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, has poured cold water on the deal, stating: "I know nothing about a Manchester City offer for Kaka. I think he's not transferable and given that is the case, he will stay at Milan."

But City seem confident enough in the persuasive power of a wheelbarrow full of oil money that they have dispatched a delegation believed to include both their chief executive Garry Cook and chief operating officer Paul Aldridge to Italy to move the deal on.

This transfer window has seen the full impact of the purchase of the Eastlands club by the Abu Dhabi royal family last September for the first time, as many players across Europe have held their clubs to ransom while seeking better deals by warning that they will decamp to Manchester should their demands not be met.

TRANSFER TALK: MANCHESTER CITY

LAST UPDATED 8:28 AM, JANUARY 14, 2009