Manchester City are set to honour Colin Bell, Mike Summerbee and Franny Lee with statues outside the Etihad Stadium.
The club unveiled lasting tributes to Vincent Kompany and David Silva at the ground on Saturday, with award-winning sculptor Andy Scott capturing their significance to supporters and contributions to the team's success over the last decade with five-metre-high steel statues by the East Stand. Work is already underway to add Sergio Aguero to that collection, with the project expected to be finished by next summer.
M.E.N Sport can also reveal that club legends Bell, Summerbee and Lee will also be immortalised outside the ground. Khaldoon Al Mubarak, club chairman, is understood to want to recognise the efforts of the trio who are so fondly remembered from the entertaining and successful City teams of the 1960s and 1970s under Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison.
Bell, widely recognised as the best player in City's history, already has a stand named after him at the ground. He passed away in January after a short illness. Summerbee still watches the team home and away as part of his role as a club ambassador, while Lee - who also had a less successful spell as club chairman in the 1990s - now follows the club from his home in Portugal.
It is expected that a new sculptor will take on the project to reflect the different era that the players belong to, with no date in place yet as to when it will be finished.
