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Not a great piece, but I liked the title, and you know what..... it may be true.

Personally, I don't reckon we have the champions mentality that scum and less so Chelsea have established at their clubs, but they say the present can only really be understood looking backwards, and I do believe that in 2020, City will have won more perm league titles this decade than any other team

Tuesday August 23,2011
By Mick Dennis

AT the end of this decade we will look back at this week and say, ‘That was when Manchester City began their era of total dominance’.

The continued pursuit of Samir Nasri signifies a seismic shift in football’s tectonic plates.

Signing Carlos Tevez two years ago was just thumbing the nose at the neighbours. Accumulating players like James Milner, Gareth Barry and Joleon Lescott from Premier League rivals was merely stocking the training ground with decent players.

But there are two reasons why offering Nasri a huge pay rise marks another change in status at what, reluctantly, we must start calling the Etihad Stadium.

The first is that Arsenal have not finished outside the top four of the Premier League since 1996. Despite Arsene Wenger’s increasingly manic impressions of Basil Fawlty, his club are part of English football’s establishment.

And Nasri is not a perpetual malcontent with incurable wander-lust like Tevez. He is an honourable bloke who is central to Arsenal’s ambitions. Yet City have the cheek and the cash to have spent the summer striving to entice him away. That means nobody, at any club, is out of reach or out of bounds for mega-bucks City.

The second reason the quest for Nasri is a symbol of impending dominance is that City’s squad is bloated with world-class players.
No other club in the history of the game have had so many top names nor been able to be so cavalier at leaving match-changers out of the team.

City’s substitutes at Bolton included Tevez and Mario Balotelli, for heaven’s sake, and they are ready to pay half of Emmanuel Adebayor’s wages while loaning him to Spurs, a club who will challenge for a Champions League spot.
City could field a team of substitutes who would prosper in the Premier League.

This unprecedented over-staffing is not restricted to the players. A vast retinue of backroom men and women went on the pre-season tour of North America and all stayed at opulent hotels and had a generous daily expenses allowance. Jealous? Moi?

Watch City warm up before matches and you will see a brigade of coaches, fitness experts, bibs and cones men and sundry unidentified bods with clipboards striding about trying to look useful.

Money simply is not a factor at City. Yet it is the single most telling factor in the Premier League.

I do not begrudge their fans their imminent period of smugness – well not the 28,000 who turned up regularly when City were in the third tier.
And I do not know if the Russians have a word for schadenfreude, but it is quite enjoyable seeing Roman Abramovich reduced to spending’s Little League by Sheikh Mansour.

Abramovich began a new inflationary cycle in English football by buying Chelsea and sploshing out half a billion quid in his first three seasons, but that is loose change to the Sheikh.

Even the £40m Manchester United picked up for carrying a sponsor’s logo on their training gear is little more than a weekend’s pocket money for City’s owners.

As for clubs owned by millionaires rather than gazillionaires, well they can forget it. A wel-run, superbly managed club like Everton have more chance of building a stadium on Mars than of scaling the upper reaches of the Premier League. A Sunderland fan, talking on a phone-in (before the ritual humiliation by Newcastle) said: “We’ve changed a lot of players and did brilliantly against Liverpool. We could finish as high as seventh.”

Yet if you think that is limited ambition, a plethora of Premier League clubs would regard finishing 17th as cause for a parade in an open-topped bus.

I do not have any cures for this grievous unfairness. But I know one thing. Have a look at the top of the Premier League table – and get used to seeing City there.

Thanks for posting that, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, especially the last line

Very nice post Patrick. Read it late last night and even though he wasn't to keen on writing it, at least he can see what's coming. I also read an article on our new Etihad deal in relation to the FFPR which basically said we can make reasonable justification for the full amount due to other clubs current sponsorships being equal or greater therefore leaving us in the clear.

The Future's Bright, The Future's Blue.

All of these fucking creeps who've been sticking the knife in, are suddenly changing their positions so they can be on the inside. If we lose a few & it looks like we're not serious challengers, they will change right back, then change over again next season if we look like winning everything.

They are lower than fucking snake shit.

No other club in the history of the game have had so many top names nor been able to be so cavalier at leaving match-changers out of the team.

Errrr...Real Madrid? Shit article full of backhanded compliments. Pandering to both sides, us and those who hate us.

Beefymcfc wrote:Very nice post Patrick. Read it late last night and even though he wasn't to keen on writing it, at least he can see what's coming. I also read an article on our new Etihad deal in relation to the FFPR which basically said we can make reasonable justification for the full amount due to other clubs current sponsorships being equal or greater therefore leaving us in the clear.

The Future's Bright, The Future's Blue.

I read yesterday that DHL are paying £40m to put their name on Training Kit used by the Salford team. Seems like a stupid thing to waste your money on and next time they pitch for my parcel business I will have another reason to tell them to fuck off! However it is another way that one of the Sheikh's companies can drop a bundle of cash into the City coffers. City of course will spend it on players whereas you can be fairly sure most of the £40m from DHL will go straight into the Glazer Boys pockets!

blues-clues wrote:

Beefymcfc wrote:Very nice post Patrick. Read it late last night and even though he wasn't to keen on writing it, at least he can see what's coming. I also read an article on our new Etihad deal in relation to the FFPR which basically said we can make reasonable justification for the full amount due to other clubs current sponsorships being equal or greater therefore leaving us in the clear.

The Future's Bright, The Future's Blue.

I read yesterday that DHL are paying £40m to put their name on Training Kit used by the Salford team. Seems like a stupid thing to waste your money on and next time they pitch for my parcel business I will have another reason to tell them to fuck off! However it is another way that one of the Sheikh's companies can drop a bundle of cash into the City coffers. City of course will spend it on players whereas you can be fairly sure most of the £40m from DHL will go straight into the Glazer Boys pockets!

Yep, they've just benchmarked another nice little earner for us. Give it a couple of years & we can do it then & sneak the going rate up to £6M per year.

[urlnp=http://www.sportingintelligence.com/2011/08/22/why-manchester-city%e2%80%99s-alleged-financial-fair-play-%e2%80%98dodge%e2%80%99-is-not-actually-dodgy-at-all-and-might-even-be-an-undervaluation-of-their-worth-220802/]Here's[/urlnp] the link if anybody's interested.

Cheers for that paddy.