Tuesday Gossip

It's always difficult. Great win, brilliant individual performance, his reaction ... you've done all that, so what's left for a follow-up? What about the money, grunts your sports editor.

Aha! Let's not forget the money, it's not been mentioned for a whole day. Good shout, boss. And so our reporter dusts off his calculator, sucks his biro and starts crunching the figures.

In the wake of that stunning 5-1 win at Tottenham, and Edin Dzeko's four-goal haul, The Telegraph's Mark Ogden is quids in with his maths as he scores the magic number for his intro.

He declares: "Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan approaches his third anniversary as Manchester City owner on Thursday having become the first £1 billion fantasy football manager following the £23 million purchase of Samir Nasri from Arsenal."

It's not all on scraps of paper and the back of an old team-sheet either. He justifies that intro with a detailed run-down of how "three years after the regime of previous owner Thaksin Shinawatra almost plunged City into financial meltdown, the transformation of Manchester City is now almost complete".

Oggy recalls with a shake of the head that the club were "desperately attempting to fund the £6.45 million signing of Argentine full-back Pablo Zabaleta before the 2008 summer transfer window closed."

And he's almost misty-eyed with nostalgia as Mr Manchester City, sorry, Bernard Halford, long-serving club secretary at the time of the takeover, ices the anniversary cake.

He quotes Mr H: "We signed Robinho at the last minute and I remember having to get the forms done at ten to midnight, with all the fans outside, driving around the stadium peeping their horns and singing.

“It was 1.30am before we got finished, but it was a fantastic day and a marker in the sand from the sheikh about what he was going to do with the club.

“It was as though it had been really cloudy and, just like that, the clouds are blown away and it’s a clear blue sky with something big coming up on the horizon.”

Heck, there's the Blue Sky/Sky Blue headline right there. We hope those Telegraph subs appreciate you, Oggy ...

Elsewhere, goal.com reports that "Espanyol have announced that they have completed the signing of Manchester City midfielder Vladimir Weiss on a season-long loan deal".

Not to be outdone, the Mail has a neat little transfer package wrapped in sky blue paper ...

"Craig Bellamy is poised to stay at Manchester City after the club refused to offer him a package to cover the last 12 months of his contract.

"Liverpool, Tottenham and Everton had been among the clubs trying to sign the Wales international but their hopes have been all but dashed.

"Bellamy, 32, will now only move on if City resurrect talks to settle the final year of his deal.

"Meanwhile, Roque Santa Cruz and Vladimir Weiss have left. Santa Cruz has joined Real Betis on a one-year loan while Weiss has joined Espanyol also for a season loan.

"Young City goalkeeper Loris Karius, 18, is joining Mainz on loan until December."

As ever, if and when deals are completed and registered, you'll find them here on mcfc.co.uk

Thans Lee1

always good t read your gossip posts.!

Our old friends the Daily Mirror yesterday printed a little box-out concerning "Mancini's Money Men". Under the small title, Mancini's £137m Bench...

Milner (£26m), Tevez (£50m), Balotelli (£24m), Johnson (£16m), Savic (£6m), Richards (£15m), Pantillimon (Loan)

Have they combined how much they cost and how much they're worth to come up with those numbers? In which case they must've gone for a liquid lunch by the time they reached Pantillimon. Or maybe they thought he was a Pokemon character.

Here, I'll do it for them: Pantillimon (£37m). Hey, it's easy this game!

Maybe they're saying how much they are worth now, rather than how much we paid for them? Which is a bit cheeky, really, because they don't even do that to Chelsea.

Or perhaps they just can't be arsed to do their homework. I think the Beeb had the bench down as £68 million, which would be much closer to the mark.

Mind, I can't blame the Mirror, because I can't be arsed to work it out either. I'm too busy counting the goals we're scoring and the number of points we're clocking up in the league

They probably included the players who came off as well without the distraction of taking the player on the pitch off the list

Yeh, that's what I thought - they're going on worth. It's deffo more like £70m on the bench.

I can't believe the side we've got now. I must've watched the extended Spurs highlights 5 times, shaking my head and muttering, "It's City... it really is City..."