Manchester City spend £150k to Robinho and pals home for Chelsea game

[Elano]

Manchester City are splashing out over £150,000 to jet home Robinho and their other South American stars to face Chelsea.

City's new billionaire owners, Abu Dhabi United, have sent a private plane on a 16,000-mile round trip to collect the ir record £32.5million signing together with Jo, Elano and Pablo Zabaleta.

The quartet, who cost City £65m, were involved in World Cup qualifiers last night and would not have arrived in Manchester in time for Saturday evening's match if they had used scheduled flights.

The luxury jet was expected to pick up Zabaleta in Lima this morning, where he was playing for Argentina against Peru, before flying the 2,340 miles across the continent to Rio de Janeiro to collect Robinho and his Brazilian team-mates.

The four would then jet the 5,900 miles from Rio to Manchester, touching down in the early hours of tomorrow morning.

Boss Mark Hughes will assess them in training tomorrow afternoon and decide if Robinho is OK to make his full debut against the club he snubbed to join City on transfer deadline day.

The £150,000 is the equivalent of loose change for the Blues' new Middle Eastern owners and they will consider it money well spent if the players get their reign off to a successful start against Chelsea.

Hughes said: "We couldn't have got the lads back in time on scheduled flights so we've had to make other arrangements.

"I'll make a judgement on what I see, but it's fair to say there will be a reasonable chance Robinho will be involved.

"The great thing about him is he offers us options as to where he can play and that kind of flexibility is something I'm always looking for in players.

"He can play wide on the left, behind a striker or alongside a target man and that will be invaluable. He is the sort of player who can affect the game wherever he is on the pitch.

[KURUPTION-81]

it will be so funny if the deal collapses, especially as apparently they have only paid 3 mil for robinho so far.