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Is Man City Going To Burst Into The Top Four In The Premiership? Not Yet

July 9, 2009

Manchester City Alex Nekrassov jnr writes: The English Premiership football club, Manchester City, became the second team, after Chelsea, to have been taken over – I stress here, taken over and not bought into – by super-rich investors, a group headed by an Abu Dhabi billionaire, Sheik Mansur, who happens to be top man in the Abu Dhabi United investment group. With Manchester City’s bitter neighbouring rivals, Manchester United, having sold their best player, Cristiano Ronaldo, to Real Madrid recently, City’s fans are becoming growingly confident that they are finally in a position where they can dislodge United as the biggest team, both in Manchester itself and in the Premiership, for the first time in their history.

Manchester City were purchased in January 2009, so the new owners were only able to initially flex their financial muscle in the January transfer window, with the transfer of Brazilian forward Robinho from Real Madrid for £32 million. Robinho’s acquisition indicated the club really meant business. They are now looking to take their spending to new heights, and have already splashed out £12m on England and Aston Villa central midfielder, Gareth Barry, and £17.5 million on Blackburn striker, Roque Santa Cruz. And other signings are expected to follow, with the club allegedly targeting Barcelona star striker, Samuel Eto’o and former Manchester United forward, Carlos Tevez. Negotiations for buying other players are undoubtedly taking place behind the scenes and it would be safe to conclude that City’s expenditure for the season will almost certainly exceed the £100 million mark.

But even if Manchester City get several top footballers to play for them success might still elude them. Perhaps the most damning assessment of the club’s position came from Brazilian player Kaka, who as recently as a month ago has completed his £56m transfer from AC Milan to Real Madrid. City were chasing Kaka in January and allegedly offered the Brazilian an obscene salary of £500,000 a week to come to the club, on top of a £100 million transfer fee to AC Milan. Milan’s awestruck executives accepted the bid and gave permission for Kaka to discuss personal terms with Man City.

The negotiations concluded, with reports emanating that Kaka felt “cold and unimpressed” by City’s offer. In a statement Kaka explained politely that while he was flattered by City’s interest, his ultimate reason for not joining was that he felt he was part of a ‘project’, rather than a football club. Kaka said: ‘Lots of smaller clubs have periods of spending big money. But suddenly the investment stops, when the owner decides to do something else. Or sometimes it stops because of other reasons like a failing economy.’ He went on to say: ‘Things can be great one moment and not so great the next moment. The organisation can collapse like a pack of playing cards.’ (Very clever all that for a footballer, I must say.)

But sarcasm aside, I have to agree with Kaka. His reasons for not joining Manchester City, choosing Real Madrid instead, is that a football club’s attraction is not its ability to blow huge sums of money in the short term. Having a foundation, which includes a prestigious history and pedigree for success and achievement in the short and long term far, outweighs the short term expansion experienced by Chelsea and Manchester City. The reality is that if the owners of football clubs get bored or if they experience financial problems, the money supply will be cut off almost immediately. Kaka did not want to take the risk of tarnishing his career by appearing to be a money grabber, and while there is no doubt he will be duly rewarded during his time at Real Madrid, the real reason why he chose the Spanish club was because he believed that he had a much more realistic chance of winning trophies year in year out. And he was probably right. Although the joke was that he went to Real and not City because he was terrified of having to learn English.

Another problem that Manchester City has is its lack of a world class manager. Even though, as in the case of Chelsea, there is no guarantee that a manager with great credentials will bring you trophies, his presence still increases the likelihood of success. Judging by the constant lack of discipline shown by Robinho, who has on countless occasions turned up for training late and sometimes did not show up at all, you wonder whether Mark Hughes has the ability to control players with egos that are only matched by their paycheques. By declaring his desire to be the man at the helm of directing where the millions of pounds of investment should go in strengthening the team and then ensuring it all works together on the pitch, Hughes could well have bitten off more than he could chew. His ability to work within tight budget constraints at Blackburn Rovers was admirable, but the unfortunate fact of the matter is that his managerial experience is very limited and the pressure on him to deliver quickly is huge.

Manchester City will be hoping to emulate Manchester United success, but the reality is that they are simply not yet cut out to burst into the top four of the Premiership.

– End –

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