Media round-up: City target Messi, Pique, Alaba AND Pogba apparently

Guardiola plans to make City "the best team on the planet"

The Sun claim that Pep Guardiola has a three-year plan to make City "the best team on the planet", and wants to bring Lionel Messi, Gerard Pique, David Alaba and Paul Pogba to The Etihad this summer. Seems pretty plausible to me. They also claim that Guardiola has been promised the chance to manage sister club New York City when he decides the time is right.

The Manchester Evening News report that United will "not fight" City to hire Guardiola, which is very charitable of them given his supposed desire to manage such a historical, romantic club. The London Evening Standard, meanwhile, say that Chelsea haven't given up hope of securing Guardiola's services and will offer him a big contract and "huge budget", which presumably won't be on offer at City.

Manuel Pellegrini has criticised the match officials following City's 2-1 defeat against Everton in the first leg of the Capital One Cup semi-final. “The first half, they scored a goal that is quite clearly offside, and in the second half we should have had a penalty,” he told Sky Sports. He remained optimistic of his team's chances of pregressing to the final, however, adding: “Losing 2-1 playing away is just 1-0 at home – we can do it.”

Finally, The Guardian report that the Blues are inexplicably interested in Central Coast Mariners’ playmaker Anthony Caceres, who has a buy-out clause of £120,000 apparently. Let's hope he's as successful as Luke Brattan, City's other Antipodean signing. It's unlikely we'll see either player in a Man City home shirt any time soon.