Man City manager Sven-Goran Eriksson makes a journey to Asia next week as his club tie up major sponsorship deals but says he will not be bringing back Thai players for the club's first team.
City are juicy 14/5 odds to beat Portsmouth this weekend.
It has been rumoured that the City boss is being coerced into bringing players from Thailand -home of new club owner Thaksin Shinawatra – these rumours have been played down by City.
"There is no chance of players from Thailand playing for our first team, certainly not in the conceivable future," said a City spokesman.
Eriksson travels to Bangkok and Shanghai with City's China international Sun Jihai. The club will put pen to paper on four new sponsorship and commercial deals. It is forecast City will earn £10million from the agreements with most of the interest coming from China and not Shinawatra's homeland. "We will be making four announcements next week, simultaneously in Bangkok, Shanghai and Manchester, regarding new partnership deals," commented the club. "There is immense interest in English football in the Far East, as well as City, and we would be aiming to crack the Far East, for want of a better word. "These deals have come about because of where we are in the Premier League table, they are not things that would have happened in our position last season." City aim to establish academies in the Far East and Eriksson will also explore the possibility of taking Thai and Chinese players to Manchester for trials.
Thailand defender Suree Sukha is tipped to be one of the first tohead over to England. City have had a number of Thai youngsters at their Carrington training ground in pre-season. However, all have returned home when it was decided they were not up to scratch.
