Manchester City Pursue Premiership Talent with Bids for Milner and Arteta

Since a series of new owners have arrived at Man City bringing with them a seemingly bottomless transfer budget, the club has consistently looked to the Premiership for new recruits.

Premiership players, particularly those of English nationality, come at a premium and the more prudent managers such as Arsene Wenger tend to do most of their shopping on the continent.

Man City are not governed by the same sort of financial restrictions as Arsenal, and the majority of the new arrivals at Eastlands have come from Premiership clubs. The failure of Mancini's men to gain entrance to the Champions League last season means that this recruitment policy is set to continue.

The advantage of signing Premiership players is that they are tried and tested in English football. For every highly rated foreign player who manages to set the Premiership alight, such as Fernando Torres, there is another who fails to replicate the form they have shown in the continental leagues, such as Fernando Morientes.

Patience is not a byword at Eastlands these days. It is instant success which the club craves and they will be ruthless in their pursuit of it.

Rapidly building a team capable of challenging the established English elite is no easy task. Man City simply do not have time to gradually nurture new talent, they need players who are going to make an instant impact which is why established Premiership performers such as James Milner and Mikel Arteta fit the bill perfectly.

The first influx of cash came under the ownership of Thaksin Shinawatra in 2007 and was followed by even wider scale expenditure when the Abu Dhabi group completed a takeover the following year.

Since then the club have signed Shay Given, Wayne Bridge, Joleon Lescott, Kolo Toure, Gareth Barry, Shaun Wright Phillips, Emmanuel Adebayor, Roque Santa Cruz, Craig Bellamy, and Carlos Tevez from fellow Premiership clubs, as well as Adam Johnson from recently relegated Middlesbrough.

These players have been complemented by a handful of highly-rated foreign recruits such as Nigel De Jong and Vincent Kompany. However, Man City's most expensive arrival has also been their most disappointing. Robinho arrived for a British transfer record of £32.5m and his signing represented a serious signal of intent by the new owners.

He had a relatively productive first season, scoring 15 goals in total, but to the frustration of manager Mark Hughes he was consistently unable to replicate his fine form at Eastlands in away games.

Robinho's second season was not nearly as successful and he had yet to register a Premiership goal by the time the January transfer window opened. Unhappy in his new environment off the pitch and unproductive on it, Robinho began to agitate for a transfer and was soon sent on loan to Santos in his native Brazil.

While Man City can afford to write off the £32.5 million which they invested in Robinho, they cannot, given their current level of ambition, afford to have underperforming players on the pitch. The lesson learned from the Robinho signing was that the club needed to look closer to home for new players.

Had Man City managed to qualify for the Champions League they might have been more audacious in their attempts to lure the likes of Fernando Torres or Frank Ribery to the club. The club knows that elite players such as these are unlikely to be willing to spend a season outside of the Champions League unless there are extenuating circumstances, as was the case with Robinho, who had fallen out with his existing employer Real Madrid.

While Ribery and Torres may be temporarily out of reach, Milner and Arteta are realistic transfer targets. Everton and Aston Villa were unable to resist big money Man City bids for Lescott and Barry last summer and Arteta and Milner are likely to follow in their footsteps, probably for around £25 million each.

Mancini knows he needs to reduce the current squad and peripheral players such as Stephen Ireland, Micah Richards, Martin Petrov, and Benjani may find themselves being used as makeweights in any domestic deals.

Publicly, clubs such as Everton complain bitterly about Man City using their new found wealth to bully them into parting ways with their very best players. Privately they must be grateful to receive the type of transfer fees that only Man City, in the world of football, would be willing to pay.

Big money transfers tend to have a domino effect as clubs look to immediately reinvest the money they have received. With Man City set to spend in excess of £50 million on Premiership players it promises be a hectic transfer window in the top tier of English football.