Manchester City are wary of intermediaries scuppering their ambitious plans for the January market.

The Times says an Arab purporting to be an intermediary of Sheikh Mansour, City's billionaire owner, had approached the agent of Iker Casillas twice in the past three months indicating that the club were prepared to shatter the world transfer record with a €150million (about £128million) offer to sign the Real Madrid goalkeeper.

City executive chairman Garry Cook said yesterday: "In spite of recent reports, we are not using intermediaries to negotiate with players. In fact, only last week we refused two agents permission to seek out players on our behalf. Mark Hughes and I very recently met with the chairman, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, to discuss this matter and we are all in agreement - that the mandate for seeking out and securing new playing personnel for Manchester City is ours and ours alone.

"Furthermore, we would also like to assure everyone concerned that we are committed to recruiting only those players who we consider to be the very best and most suitable for Manchester City in the future."