Manchester City have brought John Williams back into football four months after the Venky's Group takeover led to him ending his long association with Blackburn Rovers.

Williams, who had been chairman at Ewood Park for 13 years, will take a senior position at Eastlands, answering to the football administrator, Brian Marwood, in a number of key roles such as overseeing player contracts and developing the club's academy structure.

The appointment will be confirmed in a statement from Eastlands on Saturday morning, with City taking advantage of the change of ownership at Blackburn to bring in a man with significant experience at a top-flight club. Williams is a respected figure in Premier League circles, identified by the FA Cup winners on the basis of the reputation he has fostered in the 14 years since Jack Walker appointed him to the Blackburn board.

Williams, who has turned down several offers from elsewhere in the game, already has a strong working relationship with City's chief executive, Garry Cook, and had been looking for a return to the game since accepting a severance package from Venky's in February, three months after the poultry giant bought the club from the Walker Family Trust. He had been against the sacking of the manager, Sam Allardyce, and felt he could no longer work under the new regime.

His appointment at City will also free up Marwood and Cook to concentrate on what promises to be an extensive period of transfer business, albeit nothing like as extravagant as previous summers under the ownership of the Abu Dhabi United Group.

City have made an opening £25m bid for Alexis Sánchez, their main transfer target, but have been exasperated at times by the complex nature of the negotiations, with Udinese determined to get the best possible deal and the player's various representatives demonstrating how difficult it can be sometimes to close a deal for South America's top footballers.

There is also the significant presence of Barcelona to be considered and their rival bid for the Chilean. Sánchez would ideally move to Barcelona but that is not to say he is against the idea of moving to Manchester, and City have been bemused by reports that he refused to board a plane to discuss a possible deal with them.

On the contrary City are cautiously optimistic, particularly now Barça may be switching their focus to Arsenal's Cesc Fábregas and Manchester United's interest in the player appears to have been exaggerated. The sums involved are not as high as have been purported and that fits into City's plans of cutting back their spending to fit in with Uefa's financial fair-play guidelines.

The emphasis will then switch to offloading the players who do not fit into Roberto Mancini's plans, with around 10 possible departures as the club take calculated efforts to reduce their squad size.