Putting Manchester City back on the map
I AM very happy for Manchester City. I was worried about their Thai owner, Thaksin Shinawatra, because that man had so much else going on and the human rights thing when he was in politics out there.
The stories about him cast a bad shadow over City. Whether the fans wanted to respect that or not, I don’t know, but for me it did cast a shadow.
With these lads moving in, the Abu Dhabi Group, it all seems to be above board. The media seem to have checked them out back to front and it seems a genuine effort to put City on the map.
With the signing of Robinho everyone was just so surprised and I think Mark Hughes was surprised as well. Now he has the sort of funds he can really build the team he wants and I am sure Blackburn’s Santa Cruz will be another target he will go after as well.
It is incredible for something like that to happen to Man City fans, who five years or so ago were away in the wilderness, and to have that clout behind them is incredible. I am delighted for them but the one caution is that with the big-money men coming into football there is a bigger divide between the top half of the league and the bottom.
There is an Indian group supposedly interested in Newcastle and you wonder how long this can keep going, how are the wages going to keep going and are players going to get lured away even easier to bigger clubs like the Berbatov situation.
It shows disrespect for the fans that players can suddenly decide to leave. Robinho hears Madrid want Ronaldo so he decides ‘I don’t really want to play for you any more because if he comes he’s going to take my place, so I am going to throw the dummy out of the pram and leave’.
The more money that comes into the game the more players are going to chase it, which is an obvious course but loyalty will go out of the window.
While it is great for Manchester City and their fans, for football I am not so sure about all these big takeovers. It is great to see the best players in the world in the Premiership but when is the bubble going to burst?
It might be an ego thing for the new owners to prove they can do what Abramovich has done with Chelsea and they can do better and buy bigger. Then someone else will come along and try to do it. I think for a lot or rich men it does become an ego thing and they want to show they can do this or that with their cash.
At the end of the day it is up to the manager – or maybe it is not up to the manager.
Sir Alex Ferguson is the obvious person to hold up. He runs the club, he runs the football team, he has the final decision.
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