Eriksson revealed this week that he has three ambitious transfer targets in mind as he looks to strengthen the City squad and push for European qualification.

However, Sportsmail understands that the exact state of City’s finances under Thaksin remain unclear and that it is far from certain that Eriksson will be given the cash to spend ambitiously. Indeed, such is the lack of clarity at the club that Eriksson has been forced to draw up two different lists of targets.

One contains the names of expensive, top-of-the-range players while the other is much more modest.

City, who face Newcastle at St James” Park tonight hoping to improve their modest away form, have been linked with a range of players including Michael Owen, Tottenham’s Dimitar Berbatov, Bolton’s Nicolas Anelka and the Croatia forward Luka Modric.

One player who does interest Eriksson is Liverpool’s Peter Crouch but at £12 million he is likely to be too expensive.

But the fact is that City do not have the finances to pursue players of that stature, either in terms of transfer fees or the wages that such targets would require to come to the club.

Instead, it is more likely that Eriksson will pursue loan targets — such as the Mexican Nery Castillo who arrived from Shakhtar Donetsk two weeks ago — or more modest permanent transfers.

There were hopes that the former Thai prime minister Thaksin would release significant transfer funds after a party sympathetic to him — the People’s Power Party — won the recent elections in his home country.

But although this victory is expected to release £800m of Thaksin’s assets that were frozen after he was deposed by a military coup 15 months ago, it is understood that this cash will not be freed up before the European transfer window closes at the end of this month.

Thaksin did commit a significant amount of money to rebuilding the City squad last summer, but the majority of those transfers were concluded with modest down payments that will be topped up when and if individual players pass certain appearance and achievement landmarks.