David Silva claimed that he wanted to sign for a big club in England, and in the last month named both Manchester United and Chelsea as teams he wanted to join.

However, he then put pen to paper on a deal with Manchester City.

Yaya Toure is another player who said he wanted to join a big club and has been linked with the likes of United, Arsenal and Chelsea.

“If Barca do not want Yaya then I can name eight other clubs, some of the biggest in the world, that are interested in signing him,” his agent said this season. “One thing I can say though is that if he does leave Barca he will not go to Manchester City because he will sign for a bigger club.”

However, he has just signed a contract with City months later.

“I’m very happy to sign for Manchester City,” said Yaya. “I love the Premier League and I watch it all the time and City did very well to finish fifth, but I hope we can improve on that by qualifying for the Champions League. This is a big club and that has to be our first objective and then we have to look at winning championships as well.”

Who are they telling this lie for? Themselves, to convince themselves that money equates to size of club, despite the fact they had probably never even heard of Manchester City until Robinho signed for them? Are their egos really that big that they can’t publicly acknowledge that they’re choosing to make the step down just for money’s sake, so would rather pretend that they are moving on to a big club?

In all seriousness, it makes you wonder how much City are paying these players and agents to get them to agree to play for an unknown club that hasn’t won anything for years and isn’t competing in the Champions League. To give it some perspective, Emmanuel Adebayor is the 6th highest paid player in World football and Carlos Tevez is the 8th, with them earning more than Frank Lampard, Xavi, John Terry, Steven Gerrard, Didier Drogba and Frank Ribery. All those players took their club to the cleaners and are better than the City pair, yet even they couldn’t squeeze out as much money. Why? Because getting to play for a club that wins trophies and (usually) plays in the Champions League is reward enough.

I can only imagine the money is worth the embarrassment of having to pull on that shirt every week instead of one associated with the best and biggest clubs in Europe.

When you have a team of people who are there for money, not pride, you’ll fall flat on your arse, just as City have done in every competition they’ve entered over the past two years since they became The Richest Club In The World (TM). Yaya Toure? Just another money grabbing whore.