The difference is that all of those teams have to live with their bad spending decisions, and the likes of Barca have pulled every lever imaginable to stay afloat due to them. Chelsea’s decisions have hurt them so much they’ve had to accept a manager having them as a mid table team for an entire season. The players are playing regardless of their performances, whilst Jack Grealish can be another in a long line of players just unfancied for weeks or months, in the case of Stones, seasons because they don’t have to live with their “misses”.
United keep managers on until they miss CL football, to make it cheaper to sack.
That’s the difference with an oil state, it’s a bottomless pit and you’re beyond naive if you don’t see massive domination from a state with a bottomless pit of money.
Their rise to domination was inevitable, like nothing we’ve ever seen before but 100% inevitable due to their financial strength; so why on Earth would they suddenly not be inevitable when they are a fecking oil state, playing a game against businesses.
This. We need to keep making this point over and over again because people will forget in time.
The comparison I like to use is that of a billionaire "entrepreneur" vs a self-made businessperson.
The billionaire entrepreneur can take more risks, they can use their family connections, they can run at break even or even a loss for long periods, they can spend huge money upfront on the best PR or the best tools or the best location or the best marketing etc...they can pay over the odds for the best staff.
The self-made person has to get their decisions correct or they go bust, and they have to do that from their first day in business. They have to build gradually over time, making do with less than ideal situations until they can afford to invest.
It's also worth pointing out that City spent the bulk of their cash over a decade ago. So of course, when you compare net spend now over a long period of time, they don't look too awful overall.
However, let's say FFP wasn't a thing and the Saudi's wanted to have Newcastle challenging for a title in three or four seasons...how much would that cost in todays' market? £2BN? £3BN? When City were throwing cash around £30m was still a huge transfer fee.