Xavi Hernandez: I'd sign Arsenal's Santi Cazorla and Manchester City's David Silva for Barcelona

Barcelona captain Xavi Hernandez has claimed he would sign both Arsenal star Santi Cazorla and Manchester City playmaker David Silva to bolster the Catalans squad.

Cazorla has been praised around England in the last 24 hours after his impressive performance during Arsenal's 2-0 victory at Manchester City, with the Spaniard scoring the opener while assisting Olivier Giroud for the second goal of the game.

After an inconsistent last season at the Emirates Stadium, the Spanish maestro was heavily linked with a return to La Liga to play for Atletico de Madrid this summer.

However, he decided instead to stay at North London where has regained his peak form playing in the number 10 role while covering Mesut Ozil's injury absence.

At the same time and even though Silva was far from his best during the City defeat against Arsenal, the Spaniard is also enjoying a great season at the Etihad Stadium, having scored six goals while providing three assists in 16 Premier League appearances.

Barcelona are unable to make any addition during two transfer windows – the current one and the next summer – after being banned by Fifa for breaching rules on signing international players under the age of 18.

But when asked who would sign for Barcelona, Xavi doesn't hesitate to mention his two Spanish national team mates: "Silva and Cazorla".

"We have really good players in the Spanish football who I would sign for Barcelona. We don't need to look further. In Spain there are great footballers to play at Barcelona".

The Barcelona captain wants players able to practice the tiki-taka style like Cazorla and Silva, and also praised his current teammate Lionel Messi after the Argentinian international scored a hat-trick during the Catalans 4-0 victory over Deportivo de la Coruna on Sunday, 18 January.

"I need partners on the ground. I now have Rakitic, Busquets, Rafinha, Iniesta, Mascherano... and obviously Messi. The one who doesn't associate well with Messi is not useful to play football."