Patrick Barclay: Why I support the plot to stop Manchester City and their sheikh's millions ruling the game 
Sheikh Mansour has funded Manchester City’s empire but UEFA’s financial fair play regulations will stop rich owners from pouring money into clubs 
When Sheikh Mansour took over Manchester City, I suggested that his best route to the top of English football would be to buy and disband Manchester United, acquiring as many of their players as were wanted, then paint Old Trafford blue and use it as a training ground. Fortunately, the Sheikh and his Abu Dhabi associates preferred more constitutional methods.
Anyway, I was only joking, having a bit of fun at my red friends’ expense — even though the Sheikh did have more than enough money at his command to tempt the Glazers to cash in as the clouds of recession gathered.
As the gap between rich and ordinary people becomes wider and wider throughout the world, the potential for wealth to distort the patterns of life — in this case football — becomes greater. The way of controlling it is through politics.
Hence the letter addressed to Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore signed by representatives of Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham seeking support for strict application of UEFA’s financial fair play scheme.
These people are not idealists. They want a deterrent not to the use of wealth itself — United and Arsenal have big stadiums, Tottenham are about to follow suit and Liverpool intend to rebuild — but to sugar daddies on the Mansour model.
Martin Samuel, the Daily Mail columnist who broke the story this morning, preferred the more cuddly — if equally apposite — example of “Uncle Jack’’ Walker, who bought his home-town club, Blackburn Rovers, and equipped Kenny Dalglish with enough financial muscle to attract Alan Shearer and build the team who took the title in 1995.
Rovers’ title success was an occurrence without which the history of the Premier League era would be poorer and the same might be said of the City campaign that culminated in Sergio Aguero’s sensational snatch at the end of last season. But instances of the sugar daddy funding romance or, in the Manchester case, diversity cannot be taken in glorious isolation.
The riches with which Mansour or, before him, Roman Abramovich at Chelsea have built their empires are responsible for a salary inflation that not only disturbs United and Arsenal but destroys the chances of clubs otherwise eager to intensify competition at the top.
Aston Villa, in the time of Martin O’Neill, were one and they are now paying the price of Randy Lerner’s painful lesson. Everton under David Moyes are another. He and the admirable Bill Kenwright deserve medals for persistence — every time they look at the market, it goes through the roof.
The question of whether strict application of UEFA regulations forbidding clubs from spending more than they earn from football-related activity — they will be allowed leeway of £10 million a year or so — will help is a difficult one.
The obvious drawback is that it will set in stone the financial advantage of certain clubs and naturally anything to which David Gill puts his name must be treated with suspicion — United’s chief executive is like Sir Alex Ferguson in a velvet glove.
But we have given anarchy a chance and it has not worked. Financial fair play, on the other hand, has made a promising start, with the best piece of evidence to be found just a few miles from Old Trafford, where City are extending their academy into a thing of wonder, a thing of true worth, a thing that — crucially — UEFA have exempted from their controls because youth development and general care for the long term are precisely what the game needs.
This letter hardly scratches the surface of what the Premier League must do. But I’m glad that it was written.
