Former Manchester City chief Brian Marwood admits they almost missed out on Sergio Aguero almost ten years ago.

At the time, City were looking at then Napoli star Ezequiel Lavezzi, before chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak took a phone call.

Marwood, the director of football at the time, moved quickly to thrash out one of the most important deals in Prem history.

He recalled to The Sun: "We already had Carlos Tevez, Edin Dzeko and Mario Balotelli so we were after someone who would fit into that pool of forwards for Roberto Mancini. We'd been watching Sergio for a couple of years.

"He first came on to our radar when Mark Hughes was in charge but we didn't think we could get him.

"So we'd been looking at Lavezzi. He played with Edinson Cavani at Napoli and was a good player.

"But Khaldoon had good relations with Atletico and once we were aware we could get Sergio, we had to move quickly.

"We just thought, 'Wow, this is a no brainer'."

Marwood added: "Real Madrid and Juventus were pushing hard, so we had to get it done quickly.

"I have so much respect for people like Sergio because he could have gone to one of the biggest clubs in Europe.

"Yet he bought into the vision we sold to him.

And it was done quite quickly in the end - probably only two or three weeks after we started talking."