Mark Hughes has confirmed that he is considering an offer to take Fabian Delph to Manchester City.
Hughes spoke to the BBC yesterday, after City’s friendly with Barnsley "We have an interest in the situation. He is a young player who has been brought to our attention. I'm not sure where we are up to with that because obviously I have been busy with the game."
Some reports are claiming that City have already made an offer of £10m, and speculation was intensified when Delph was left out of the Leeds squad that travelled to Burnley. However, the club is claiming that he missed the trip to Turf Moor due to an injury he picked up in training on Friday.
If it’s true that City have submitted a bid of £10m, then it vindicates Uncle Ken’s decision not to accept offers of £6m from Villa and Everton. And it would probably be enough for them to secure Delph’s signature, as it’s been suggested that £8m was the valuation that Leeds were going to put on the teenager’s head.
£10m would undoubtedly be too good for Leeds to turn down, so I suppose that we should be grateful that City have decided to enter the fray, effectively maximising the amount we could hope to receive for the player. We can but hope that Grayson will be allowed to spend the bulk of the cash on strengthening the squad, and that the transfer goes through in time for him to sign a couple of players before the transfer window shuts.
Whether the move works out for Delph remains to be seen. No doubt City could offer him higher wages than any other of his potential suitors, but he would find it hard to break into their first team as they continue to assemble a huge squad of established internationals.
Despite Delph’s absence, Leeds continued our impressive pre-season with a win at Burnley, so we remain unbeaten in three games against teams from higher divisions. Beckford and Becchio were missing, the former also out with an injury sustained in training, (what exactly have they been doing in training this week?) but we still won with goals from Grella and Robinson.