United rubbish City's Ronaldo talk

Gill plays down Al-Fahim comments

Last updated: 7th September 2008   Subscribe to RSS Feed

United rubbish City's Ronaldo talk

Gill: Not worried by City

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Manchester United chief executive David Gill is taking Manchester City's reported interest in Cristiano Ronaldo 'with a pinch of salt'.

City's potential new owner, Dr Sulaiman Al-Fahim of the Abu Dhabi United Group, has revealed he intends to lodge a £100million plus bid for United star Ronaldo.

But Gill insists Al-Fahim's comments cannot be taken too seriously.

"It was an interesting comment, I think it's a fan's-type comment," said Gill.

"It's interesting when Alex [Ferguson] mentioned the Dimitar Berbatov signing in advance that complaints were made to the Premier League.

"He mentioned [Fernando] Torres and [Cesc] Fabregas in the same article so I think we will treat that with a pinch of salt.

"I have never met the gentleman. That is a fantastic amount of money and would turn the industry upside down so I can't believe he is serious at those sorts of levels.

"Ultimately we would discuss any offer with Alex and the owners, as that sort of money is very large for one person. But we are not in the market to sell our best players."

Berbatov by the book

On United's long pursuit and eventual capture of Dimitar Berbatov from Tottenham, Gill insists the club did everything correctly amid claims they had broken Premier League rules.

"We are very comfortable with how the whole thing went. There were allegations made, we are comfortable that how we approached it was entirely correct and within the rules," Gill told Five Live.

"It came together on Monday and the agent was given permission for the player to come up to Manchester, we arranged the plane for him and Alex met him at the airport.

"It's true to say when the medical commenced we had not finished all the final negotiations with Spurs but both parties were confident they would be completed to everyone's satisfaction.

"We are very comfortable we had permission to do what we did and it was clear to Tottenham and Daniel Levy in particular that he knew what we were doing and if that wasn't the case we wouldn't have done it."

Gill also confirmed that the club soon hope to finalise a permanent deal for Argentine ace Carlos Tevez.

"One other bit of business we will do is finalise the Carlos Tevez deal and then the composition of the squad will be first class," he said.