Keegan usually writes bad things about us, I wonder if he has had a lobotomy?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footba ... ub-on.html
Manchester City were derided as rich man's plaything... but seven years on and Sheik Mansour can boast trophies, an academy and the cheapest season tickets in top flight
- Manchester City were critcised for ruining football after Sheik Mansour bought the club in 2008
- Seven years later the Blues have won two Premier League titles, the FA Cup and the Capital One Cup
- City have invested into the community and built state-of-the-art academy
- Mocking of the signing Yaya Toure for £24m looks a moot point now
The ink was hardly dry on Sheik Mansour's deal to buy Manchester City before the insults came pouring down as heavy as the city's notorious rain.
Some were to be expected. The usual lines about buying success and ruining football, despite the fact that ship sailed more than 20 years ago and that nobody tried to sink it as it left harbour.
It was the jibes from within which hurt the most. Colin Schindler, City fan and author of the book Manchester United Ruined My Life, wrote: 'At least this Abu Dhabi lot have got money, but that's all they've got.
'They've taken my love who (former owner Thaksin) Shinawatra turned into a whore, cloaked her in the finest of silk dresses and doused her in the most seductive of Arabian fragrances. 'I don't recognise her any longer. She might look beautiful but she's rotten at the core.'
Nice. And when City began to spend to catch up with the best it got worse. Having won all domestic competitions, the Champions League still represents a challenge for the club
In 2010 after they paid £24m to Barcelona for Yaya Toure and handed him around £250,000-a-week one report read: 'giving a quarter-of-a-million quid every seven days to a defensive squad player who no other club would have touched for that kind of money and whose name won’t sell shirts, is insanity on a previously unimagined scale'. There is a paranoia among many City fans about the media. On the whole, it is unjustified, but with comments like that it is no wonder it exists. In the same piece the author asked where deals like the one for Toure (who turned out alright for a squad player) would leave the price of season tickets in five years time. Well, five years have passed and, with the Etihad Stadium currently being expanded, season tickets can still be had at City for less than £300 – cheaper than anywhere else in the Premier League. Hell – if I wanted a season ticket to watch my own club Oldham Athletic embark on their 18th consecutive season in League One eight miles up the road I would have to pay more than that.
At the end of this summer it will be seven years since the takeover which seems as good a time as any to review.
In those seven years City, perennial underachievers for the previous 40 years, have won the Premier League twice, the FA Cup and and the Capital One Cup. The Arabian fragrance alluded to carries the sweet scent of success for supporters who had suffered fools in charge of their club for far too long.
Typical City, formerly used to describe the latest cock-up at Maine Road, now means something entirely different. But in this case it is so much more than buying great players and winning trophies - and that is the point. Last year, City opened their gleaming new £200m Academy across the road from the Etihad.
Its construction created dozens of jobs for locals and turned wasteland on which an imposing former dyeworks once operated into a shiny, state-of-the-art landmark in one of Manchester's most deprived wards. They love City at Manchester council and why wouldn't they? Who else would bring investment like this? The academy project also included a new sixth form college and a host of facilities for a community that was certainly in need of them.
And then there is the commitment to nurturing young talent within that academy. That the sons of Reds Robin van Persie, Phil Neville and Darren Fletcher play with the Blues speaks volumes. The club have invested into the local community and built an academy that is the envy of the world
Jason Wilcox, the former Blackburn man now in charge of City's Under 18s, told me a few weeks ago they were very confident that when Manchester's best youngsters saw what City had to offer they would not go anywhere else. It was hard not to believe him.
When Sheikh Mansour arrived some voiced a view that City were a rich man's play thing and that he would soon become bored.
Indeed there have been many occasions over the seven years when he could have taken his bat and ball home, none more so than when the good folks at UEFA decided to hit City with Financial Fair Play restrictions. That's the Manchester club whose owners have invested more than £1bn, not the one at the other end of the Mancunian Way whose owners have taken hundreds of millions out. But the Sheik's commitment remains as strong as ever, even after a second-placed season which, in these heady days, can be considered a disappointment.
In his end of term interview last week chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak spoke of 'an emotional attachment' to the club.
He mentioned the £350m generated in revenue that has put City among the world's elite and added that they are now profitable, 'a sustainable engine'.
There was no bullet for manager Manuel Pellegrini, just a vow to provide him with silver for another big summer in the transfer market.
'I have been here for seven years,' Al Mubarak added. 'Every walk I have through Manchester, every lunch or dinner, it is now a second home.'
His words will have been music to the ears of City fans who may well wonder whether the snipers who greeted his boss's arrival with such disdain are now singing from a different hymn sheet.
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