City reward Mancini with offer of three-year £15m contract deal

[The_Ripper]

Manchester City have formally opened talks with Roberto Mancini over a new £15million contract.

Speculation has been rife for the last six months that the manager of the Barclays Premier League champions would be offered a new deal at the Etihad Stadium this summer.

But Sportsmail can reveal that City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak finally sat down with Mancini for talks in Abu Dhabi on Friday afternoon and those discussions continued throughout the weekend.

City want to reward the Italian with a new three-year deal worth £5m a year. That represents a significant improvement on the £3.5m contract Mancini signed when he arrived at the club two-and-a-half years ago.

Mancini flew to the Middle East last Tuesday morning with his assistant David Platt and football administrator Brian Marwood. Mancini and Platt were congratulated on winning the league title by City owner Sheik Mansour before the manager was invited to stay on for contract talks as the others flew back to Manchester last Thursday.

As of Sunday night, City had not reached complete agreement with their manager and that is why there has not been an announcement yet.

However, the club do expect to have the deal signed and sealed before Mancini leaves on a family holiday at the end of the week.

A £5m-a-year deal would see Mancini leapfrog Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson in terms of salary but would still leave him behind Arsene Wenger, who earns £6m a year at Arsenal.


 

[Hack Wilson - real]

that is a nice contract for him

[The_Ripper]