Do City leave you cold?

The fact that 6 weeks into the season their generational midfield talisman is a forgotten man has got me thinking about this thread again. KdB's absence barely even registers.

Ironically, they might be helped by a long period of struggling and losing after Pep leaves. That would probably invite some jeopardy, fragility and colorful characters. So many of the things that they have done to construct this winning machine are the same reasons why so many feel this way about them. As much a people claim it, the winning cannot be ignored, but something still somehow feels off. City are like a hyper efficient, ruthless capitalist beast optimized to reduce all risk and unpredictability and tailored to win at all costs. Even at the cost of those things that would leave you with some "feeling". It feels like Amazon in the corporate world. This ethos has manifested is so many elements of the club:

Money: I don't think much needs to be said here. City spend a lot to win a lot.

Style of play: This has already been covered a lot as well. Dominance of the ball, primacy of control, other teams defending deep. It's a style that tries to reduce jeopardy to the maximum extent, often sucking the life out of games and, again, making the outcomes very predictable.

Squad Management and Versatility of players: It's obviously very helpful to have versatile players. At time's City's squad depth appears greater than it is because they have a lot of versatile players that can cover many positions without too much overall loss to the system. The flip side of this though is that no one feels essential. They are just cogs. It's harder to develop attachments when you know you won't really miss a player all that much.

Academy Factory: Again, being optimized for financialization, City is now heavily relying on their academy primarily as a tool to balance the books. You get some type of feeling or attachment when you see a boy grow into a man and integrate into the first team. Feels like you were part of the journey. But with a ruthless, optimized winning machine, this element can get lost, even if it is the smart thing to do financially. I fear for Rico Lewis' future.

Temperament of Players: Where are the players you can hate? The players that stir emotion or cause controversy? I think City is intentional in the profile of character of player they recruit. I know Zlatan has a strong hate for Pep, but some of what he says rings true. They are mostly "good boys" with even temperaments that will follow instructions. The occasional jerk like Joao Cancelo is quickly moved along when he starts to create waves. Gvardiol, Kovacic, Nunes, Doku...where are the jerks?!?

Media Presence: Pep learned from his early tangles with Mourinho and now is reluctant to get drawn into long media battles. He often gives the most anodyne answers and avoids controversy, even damning opponents with faint praise. He can be snarky and condescending, but it can be subtle and harder to pick up on. As a result, the "rivalries" are less spicy.

All of this can combine to create a devastatingly effective and consistent winning machine, but jeopardy, unpredictability and color of characters are what evoke the strongest emotions and engender the strongest attachments. Everyone can recognize Amazon for the corporate juggernaut that it is and will maybe even order a thing or two, but no one will be telling their kids of those glorious, memorable days scrolling down the screen gobbling up those Prime Day specials.

Maybe they are betting on winning so much that none of this will matter in the wash of history when the younger fans grow older.
 
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Taribo's Gap said:
The fact that a 6 weeks into the season their generational midfield talisman is a forgotten man has got me thinking about this thread again. KdB's absence barely even registers.

Ironically, they might be helped by a long period of struggling and losing after Pep leaves. That would probably invite some jeopardy, fragility and colorful characters. So many of the things that they have done to construct this winning machine are the same reasons why so many feel this way about them. As much a people claim it, the winning cannot be ignored, but something still somehow feels off. City are like a hyper efficient, ruthless capitalist beast optimized to reduce all risk and unpredictability and tailored to win at all costs. Even at the cost of those things that would leave you with some "feeling". It feels like Amazon in the corporate world. This ethos has manifested is so many elements of the club:

Money: I don't think much needs to be said here. City spend a lot to win a lot.

Style of play: This has already been covered a lot as well. Dominance of the ball, primacy of control, other teams defending deep. It's a style that tries to reduce jeopardy to the maximum extent, often sucking the life out of games and, again, making the outcomes very predictable.

Squad Management and Versatility of players: It's obviously very helpful to have versatile players. At time's City's squad depth appears greater than it is because they have a lot of versatile players that can cover many positions without too much overall loss to the system. The flip side of this though is that no one feels essential. They are just cogs. It's harder to develop attachments when you know you won't really miss a player all that much.

Academy Factory: Again, being optimized for financialization, City is now heavily relying on their academy primarily as a tool to balance the books. You get some type of feeling or attachment when you see a boy grow into a man and integrate into the first team. Feels like you were part of the journey. But with a ruthless, optimized winning machine, this element can get lost, even if it is the smart thing to do financially. I fear for Rico Lewis' future.

Temperament of Players: Where are the players you can hate? The players that stir emotion or cause controversy? I think City is intentional in the profile of character of player they recruit. I know Zlatan has a strong hate for Pep, but some of what he says rings true. They are mostly "good boys" with even temperaments that will follow instructions. The occasional jerk like Joao Cancelo is quickly moved along when he starts to create waves. Gvardiol, Kovacic, Nunes, Doku...where are the jerks?!?

Media Presence: Pep learned from his early tangles with Mourinho and now is reluctant to get drawn into long media battles. He often gives the most anodyne answers and avoids controversy, even damning opponents with faint praise. He can be snarky and condescending, but it can be subtle and harder to pick up on. As a result, the "rivalries" are less spicy.

All of this can combine to create a devastatingly effective and consistent winning machine, but jeopardy, unpredictability and color of characters are what evoke the strongest emotions and engender the strongest attachments. Everyone can recognize Amazon for the corporate juggernaut that it is and will maybe even order a thing or two, but no one will be telling their kids of those glorious, memorable days scrolling down the screen gobbling up those Prime Day specials.

Maybe they are betting on winning so much that none of this will matter in the wash of history when the younger fans grow older.
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Very good post and I agree with most of what you say, however I strongly disagree with your point about money. We have spent more than City and are nowhere close to City both on and off the pitch.

This is an unpopular opinion from what I have read this far on the forum but the main issue imo is not the Glazers even though I want them gone ASAP.

The issue for me is the board who are sactioning the money. The Glazers have spent as much money as City but its been spent foolishly.

The Glazers are not going anywhere as they get to drain the club of money and neglect the stadium etc. We should focus on football matters and sack the board for years of incompetence. We have thrown stupid amounts of money on players that are bought on a whim and we always massively overpay.

I am still behind ETH as I think he has an impossible job with all the other off field issues going on and if we can implement all your other well laid out points we will be back in business .

I am sick of hearing Neville blame the Glazers after every defeat as we know they won't let go out of the club while they make huge sums of money. We should focus on what we can change for now, sack the board and hope down the line we get new owners ready to invest in the infrastructure of the club.

It's going to be a long season but I have faith ETH can get top 5 once new signings bed in.
 
Football in general leaves me cold these days. Everything seems so souless and sanitised. Where's the individual flair, the characters? It's all about systems and the players are just interchangable parts. Think about the 90's or the 00's. Think of all the top defenders/midfielders/strikers you could name from that era. How many greats can you name now?

There seems so few standout players in world football, relatively speaking. When we were talking all summer about potential striker signings, the 'list' was basically Kane and a guy that had done well for a short period of time in Italy. After that it was hard to think of anyone except potential punts on youngsters. Even managers. How many great managers are there at the moment? There seems so little of anything, barely anyone stands out from the pack.

I dislike tiki-taka. Not an anti-city thing, I hated it when Barcelona did it and I hated it when Spain did it. The whole notion of suffocating a game of football by never allowing the opponents to have the ball kills a match as a spectacle and as a result football is less interesting to watch. Football is arguably more skilful and technical now than it's ever been but it's just not as exciting. City play football like a team designed by AI. Ruthless and mechanical.

I've been saying for a decade or more that one day, the Premier league will consist of 20 clubs all owned by bored billionaires and football will boil down a dick waving competition to see who's got the biggest wad. We're well on the way to that happening. Nobody is going to compete with city long term, except Newcastle eventually or anyone else funded by a state. Other teams might be able compete for a season or two, like Liverpool did, but inevitably they will fall away again because it's not sustainable. We already know who's going to win the Premier League this season and we've only played five games. Where's the excitement? What's the point? It's like sitting through the full 90 minutes of a match you already know the result of.

We won't ever compete unless we're taken over by Qatar or whoever, and the thought of that sickens me. Any success we have that way will be as worthless and hollow as city's is now. If that's what it takes to be successful, then success is meaningless to me. I still enjoy watching United, despite our crapness, but the first time in my life I feel like I can't be bothered to watch any other games. This was the first time in my life I was actually happy there was an international break.

Even the CL is boring. City v Real Madrid! Again! PSG v Barcelona! Again! Yay! Same teams, same fixtures over and over. Christ, imagine how fecking tedious a European Superleague would be. Football leaves me cold.

I'll stop moaning now :lol:
 
Football has been heading this way since the PL began. It will carry on going down this road. It's what happens in most sports at the very top once they become very successful.
 
Basically feels like John Cena winning every week in WWE.

I just wish couldn't see it.

Fortunately for The Premier League it's competition from 2-20 is sill interesting. It's now just a premium Bundesliga.
 
red till I die 2023 said:
We have spent more than City and are nowhere close to City both on and off the pitch.
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It's anyone's guess how much City have spent. There's no point using their self-reported expenses as a metric for anything when they're currently under investigation for lying about those numbers. It's like basing the BMI index on Trump's claim that he weighs 190 pounds or whatever it was. Even if we set aside the actual cooking of books that goes on at City, they also have a lot of "creative" deals. Look at the Haaland transfer--technically they paid like £50m for him, and that's what's on the record. Then they also had to pay something similar in roundabout fees to his agent and whatnot in order to get the deal done, but any record of the transfer omits this. Go to Transfermarkt or wherever and it'll look like City spent £50m on him.

Comparing what we've spent to what City claim to have spent, when the biggest investigation in today's football concerns their financial dishonesty, is pointlesss. It's a lot easier to build the best squad in the league when you can throw absolutely insane amounts of money at every position. When your owners can just enable you to pay whatever amount it takes under the table to get any and all players to agree, success is automatic.
 
Is it that or is it more they're the lesser evil when your teams are too shit to win the league themselves? Would have been the case even for United fans the last few years with Liverpool the alternative most of the time.

For example in 2014 I hated it when they won it as it should have been us but with their Pep titles we've been told shit to do it ourselves so rather them than Liverpool/Arsenal.
 
Dancfc said:
Is it that or is it more they're the lesser evil when your teams are too shit to win the league themselves? Would have been the case even for United fans the last few years with Liverpool the alternative most of the time.

For example in 2014 I hated it when they won it as it should have been us but with their Pep titles we've been told shit to do it ourselves so rather them than Liverpool/Arsenal.
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Yep that's basically why they just amble through and win titles and no one cares.

No one dislikes them enough like Man United, Liverpool, et al to care about them monopolising the league. Be interesting if people start to get sick of them winning it, or how long it takes for people to start actively disliking them.
 
Whatever you think of them imo there the most conceted club ever, it's now established and run properly in certain terms take away the underhanded crooks. They brought the right guy in and gave him the funds , they seem to deal with scrutiny better that most clubs and maybe because they have thick skin and know there crooks... they also don't get the media bullshit other clubs get because there a lesser club..
 
I obviously dislike Manchester City, but its too large of a difference for me to care much at this point. If we ever get back on track and manage to compete at the same level, the feelings will intensify again. It was the same when we were on top and you had City at bottom of the table, didnt really care much about them. '

Kind of sad to say, but there's too much crap going on inside our own club for me to care about others at this point. Sad state of affairs.
 
They remind me of a well-drilled sinister corporation. The type you see in movies.
 
Dansk said:
It's anyone's guess how much City have spent. There's no point using their self-reported expenses as a metric for anything when they're currently under investigation for lying about those numbers. It's like basing the BMI index on Trump's claim that he weighs 190 pounds or whatever it was. Even if we set aside the actual cooking of books that goes on at City, they also have a lot of "creative" deals. Look at the Haaland transfer--technically they paid like £50m for him, and that's what's on the record. Then they also had to pay something similar in roundabout fees to his agent and whatnot in order to get the deal done, but any record of the transfer omits this. Go to Transfermarkt or wherever and it'll look like City spent £50m on him.

Comparing what we've spent to what City claim to have spent, when the biggest investigation in today's football concerns their financial dishonesty, is pointlesss. It's a lot easier to build the best squad in the league when you can throw absolutely insane amounts of money at every position. When your owners can just enable you to pay whatever amount it takes under the table to get any and all players to agree, success is automatic.
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Fair comment in relation to City, but our bang for buck is appalling. We have no excuses when it comes to spending over the last 10 years. We should be much better placed than we actually are.

I despise City for obvious reasons and at first I admired the total control football they produced and them keeping the Scousers at bay. Now I never watch their games as it is so robotic and boring. Rarely much excitement in their games. Haaland has already missed 8 big chances and yet they sleepwalk their way to victory.

Even if we were better at buying players and had a system or style of play in place my gut tells me we would still be fighting for second place. The City machine just grinds teams down and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Much like under SAF, teams are beaten before ko due to knowing the strength of City and the effort required just to keep the score down, damage limitation mentality.

City are in third gear and if anyone threatens going ahead by too much in the leafue they just go up the gears. The points totals they have racked up in recent seasons is insane.

Boring football, financial cheats and beyond KDB and Silva they have very unlikeable players.

The PL for the sake of the game has to charge and punish them properly to bring back any credibility to the game. I am not holding my breath.
 
jontheblue said:
Football has been heading this way since the PL began. It will carry on going down this road. It's what happens in most sports at the very top once they become very successful.
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The issue is that you have to at least give the pretence of there being competition in the league which there hasn’t been since a country took control of a football club. City had some really bad transfers but really since Mancini there has been stability there. This is ignoring the cheating of course which no one seems to care about.

The idea of the PL being competitive has always been the Sky narrative (we as United fans know this well) and not really the truth but previously at least whichever team was peaking would need to rebuild and that simply couldn’t be done in a single window, transfer outlays, fees and wages were smaller but there wasn’t the ability to spend at such a ridiculous level (Pep was given an entire back 5 and B Silva in a single window for example, that’s obscene) and so there was that great period when Arsenal/United/Chelsea were all about equal and Pool were very strong and won the CL. Whilst the wisdom of letting Abramovich into the league was iffy, he was at least an individual not a state and, as has been proven, could be controlled. We are now literally celebrating the treble winners who have been charged with a never seen before scale of cheating whilst their owners supply Russia for their invasion of Ukraine. That is why football is dead and so the PL did the only thing they could do, bring in a bigger fish to kill the monstrosity they’d created and so now Saudi are here and soon qatar will be too and maybe the sad truth is the only option to get some form of competitiveness back in the league.
 
After the 115 charges, anything they win doesn't matter until they are punished. You can't fault City fans for enjoying the success, but any attempts to defend the cheating should be mocked.
 
miked99 said:
Football in general leaves me cold these days. Everything seems so souless and sanitised. Where's the individual flair, the characters? It's all about systems and the players are just interchangable parts. Think about the 90's or the 00's. Think of all the top defenders/midfielders/strikers you could name from that era. How many greats can you name now?
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Yeah watching the Arsenal vs Everton game yesterday and it was so boring. No one has time on the ball to do anything interesting. It's all just roided out men running after each other in a very well coordinated routine hoping for mistakes. It's fecking shite as spectacle.
 
As United fans we're in a position where it's very easy to be left cold by a success of a rival.
Many of us feel distanced from the club, which makes it harder to be enthusiastic about football in general.

But then, yes, this City side are just very very very good at what they do. No spark, no magic to it, and none of their players have any peculiar thing about them (it's so obvious why United fans would hate Gerrard, Carra, Mcmanaman, Vieira, Pires, Drogba, Terry... and why their fans in turn will loathe Keane, Giggs, Neville and many more).

Who's there to hate at City, besides Pep? And Kompany in the past.
A bunch of brilliant players who play machine-like football and you never think about any of them until you check their scores online.
How someone could genuinely hate KDB, Bernardo, Rodri, Haaland... is beyond me.

I almost hate Arteta, Odegaard, and Ramsdale for some reason, and I haven't properly watched an Arsenal game in ages.
their existence still annoys me.
 
red till I die 2023 said:
Very good post and I agree with most of what you say, however I strongly disagree with your point about money. We have spent more than City and are nowhere close to City both on and off the pitch.
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City have a higher net spend than United since 2008 even going by official figures as well as all the extras in brown envelopes. They also spent £200m on new training facilities which is conveniently never counted towards their spending when comparisons with United are made and neither are the fines they had to pay UEFA after breaking the rules.

United have been terribly run, but only ended up spending ridiculous money on subpar players because the market was inflated by the likes of City, Chelsea and PSG.

City would be nowhere without the money, it's ridiculous to suggest their success is down to anything else. Newcastle will be having similar success in 4 or 5 years and will be similarly praised for being so well run while United, Arsenal and Liverpool will be criticised and laughed at by the media and their own fans for not being able to compete against a couple of state owned playthings.

Thinking about the way United built their teams and won European Cups in 68 and 99 and then comparing it to the way City won theirs last year is truly a sad indictment of modern football. There are no stories or traditions involved, just pumping in enough money until you eventually win.
 
Care_de_Bobo said:
City have a higher net spend United since 2008 even going by official figures as well as all the extras in brown envelopes. They also spent £200m on new training facilities which is conveniently never counted towards their spending when comparisons with United are made and neither are the fines they had to pay UEFA after breaking the rules.

United have been terribly run, but only ended up spending ridiculous money on subpar players because the market was inflated by the likes of City, Chelsea and PSG.

City would be nowhere without the money, it's ridiculous to suggest their success is down to anything else. Newcastle will be having similar success in 4 or 5 years and will be similarly praised for being so well run while United, Arsenal and Liverpool will be criticised and laughed at by the media and their own fans for not being able to compete against a couple of state owned playthings.

Thinking about the way United built their teams and won European Cups in 68 and 99 and then comparing it to the way City won theirs last year is truly a sad indictment of modern football. There are no stories or traditions involved, just pumping in enough money until you eventually win.
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The net spend is always calculated from when Sir Alex retired not when the UAE bought City. They spent so much in the first 5 years which was actually put through the accounts. We already know that they were paying Mancini double his salary so it’s likely the players were in the same position.

On top of this they have utilised the club structure with other clubs purchased around the world which has massively assisted with net spend, on top of pumping millions in the youth system and using the money earned to reduce their net spend. Some may say this is good business but in reality there are a lot of ethical issues with this using young players. Most of the the historic big clubs don’t want to pursue it other than than the likes of Italian clubs where it’s been common place for years.
 
Josep Dowling said:
The net spend is always calculated from when Sir Alex retired not when the UAE bought City. They spent so much in the first 5 years which was actually put through the accounts. We already know that they were paying Mancini double his salary so it’s likely the players were in the same position.

On top of this they have utilised the club structure with other clubs purchased around the world which has massively assisted with net spend, on top of pumping millions in the youth system and using the money earned to reduce their net spend. Some may say this is good business but in reality there are a lot of ethical issues with this using young players. Most of the the historic big clubs don’t want to pursue it other than than the likes of Italian clubs where it’s been common place for years.
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What ethical issues?
 
Care_de_Bobo said:
City have a higher net spend than United since 2008 even going by official figures as well as all the extras in brown envelopes. They also spent £200m on new training facilities which is conveniently never counted towards their spending when comparisons with United are made and neither are the fines they had to pay UEFA after breaking the rules.

United have been terribly run, but only ended up spending ridiculous money on subpar players because the market was inflated by the likes of City, Chelsea and PSG.

City would be nowhere without the money, it's ridiculous to suggest their success is down to anything else. Newcastle will be having similar success in 4 or 5 years and will be similarly praised for being so well run while United, Arsenal and Liverpool will be criticised and laughed at by the media and their own fans for not being able to compete against a couple of state owned playthings.

Thinking about the way United built their teams and won European Cups in 68 and 99 and then comparing it to the way City won theirs last year is truly a sad indictment of modern football. There are no stories or traditions involved, just pumping in enough money until you eventually win.
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The game is hard to take seriously anymore. Unless City are severely punished for their brazen cheating it will remain like that unfortunately.
 
I really couldn't careless about them at all but if Liverpool wins anything it does my head in, city though are just a soulless bunch!
 
Berbasbullet said:
Yep that's basically why they just amble through and win titles and no one cares.

No one dislikes them enough like Man United, Liverpool, et al to care about them monopolising the league. Be interesting if people start to get sick of them winning it, or how long it takes for people to start actively disliking them.
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To me and I’m guilty of it too. It’s a total cop out wanting City to win the title every season over Pool and Arsenal for example.

They are actually racking up a tonne of titles including European ones (a few near misses aside) they could almost have our European record.

How long can we have a club just bankrolled by a state with unlimited money? I don’t see an end to it right now as nobody is stopping them or even pretending to care.

It’s a farce one club has so much power in what is supposed to be a sport.

People could argue that about us but it was Fergie in the 90’s and early 00’s but City have turned this game into barely a sport at all. It’s not competitive anymore.

American sport is ran a lot better than our game that’s for sure. They would never let fair competition to get eroded in such a blatant way.
 
Julian Alvarez's game time for the season has just been cut in half. Hopefully he starts grumbling for a starting place and Pep sells him.
 
Hammondo said:
What ethical issues?
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The whole point of a youth system is to bolster your own squad. City have brought in Foden since 2008. Most youth players are given a chance once or twice in the league cup and then sold at crazy profit because of their ‘potential’. Everyone was raving about Cole Palmer, now sold after a couple of good performances. Chelsea do exactly the same thing.

They have no care whether the players makes it at their club, it’s just about profit. I would say United and Liverpool have a very different view to the academy and how they treat players off the pitch.
 
Leave me cold? Nah, their treble is up there with Lance Armstrongs 7 Tour de France wins in terms of sporting achievement
 
Josep Dowling said:
The whole point of a youth system is to bolster your own squad. City have brought in Foden since 2008. Most youth players are given a chance once or twice in the league cup and then sold at crazy profit because of their ‘potential’. Everyone was raving about Cole Palmer, now sold after a couple of good performances. Chelsea do exactly the same thing.

They have no care whether the players makes it at their club, it’s just about profit. I would say United and Liverpool have a very different view to the academy and how they treat players off the pitch.
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Indeed, it's a proud part of our heritage and history, and something I have always admired a great deal about us. Even Liverpool as you say, I respect how they try and do the same, but Chelsea and City...totally different.
 
They're an empty shell of a club. Shiny, fancy, full of money but in the end just a shell.
 
Someone once said that their fans were happier when they were losing everything and it’s hard to disagree, it just seems like such a vacuous entity, designed by the far east to extract as much money as possible out of the game and into their wallets.. it’s not Manchester City, it’s Abu Dhabi athletic club .. once you see it for what it is, it’s hard to care really
 
big_jeffstar said:
Someone once said that their fans were happier when they were losing everything and it’s hard to disagree, it just seems like such a vacuous entity, designed by the far east to extract as much money as possible out of the game and into their wallets.. it’s not Manchester City, it’s Abu Dhabi athletic club .. once you see it for what it is, it’s hard to care really
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Out of interest, who do you want owning the club next year post Glazers?
 
Josep Dowling said:
The whole point of a youth system is to bolster your own squad. City have brought in Foden since 2008. Most youth players are given a chance once or twice in the league cup and then sold at crazy profit because of their ‘potential’. Everyone was raving about Cole Palmer, now sold after a couple of good performances. Chelsea do exactly the same thing.

They have no care whether the players makes it at their club, it’s just about profit. I would say United and Liverpool have a very different view to the academy and how they treat players off the pitch.
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Yea this is not uncommon, we have in recent years not really given young players much of a chance at all.

What they are doing is training young players and giving them a better chance at a career than they would have, without it less youngsters would get that level of training. Just look how many go on to PL teams, they are doing these youngsters a good service.
 
I prefer them over Liverpool. We all know their success comes directly from fraud and cheating using dirty money.I won’t be able to stand it if them bin dippers dominate.
 
Galactic said:
I prefer them over Liverpool. We all know their success comes directly from fraud and cheating using dirty money.I won’t be able to stand it if them bin dippers dominate.
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Their club money comes from fraud and cheating, the success comes from actually having an incredibly well ran organization, hiring the right people, buying the right players, playing a certain way.

If we would have done the same with the fecking 1 billion we spent since Alex left, we would never have this conversation and we'd be just competing head to head with them.
 
manhood said:
Their club money comes from fraud and cheating, the success comes from actually having an incredibly well ran organization, hiring the right people, buying the right players, playing a certain way.
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Love this part. It's like when mafia says they run perfectly legit businesses with the right people in the right positions but it all started with the laundered money.

Money comes from fraud and cheating and success comes from it too.
 
manhood said:
Their club money comes from fraud and cheating, the success comes from actually having an incredibly well ran organization, hiring the right people, buying the right players, playing a certain way.

If we would have done the same with the fecking 1 billion we spent since Alex left, we would never have this conversation and we'd be just competing head to head with them.
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No, the success comes from money, too. Brighton have an incredibly well ran organization, buying the right players, playing a certain way. They just don't have enough money. Just because United squandered a lot of money doesn't mean City didn't buy their success.
 
Care_de_Bobo said:
City have a higher net spend than United since 2008 even going by official figures as well as all the extras in brown envelopes. They also spent £200m on new training facilities which is conveniently never counted towards their spending when comparisons with United are made and neither are the fines they had to pay UEFA after breaking the rules.

United have been terribly run, but only ended up spending ridiculous money on subpar players because the market was inflated by the likes of City, Chelsea and PSG.

City would be nowhere without the money, it's ridiculous to suggest their success is down to anything else. Newcastle will be having similar success in 4 or 5 years and will be similarly praised for being so well run while United, Arsenal and Liverpool will be criticised and laughed at by the media and their own fans for not being able to compete against a couple of state owned playthings.

Thinking about the way United built their teams and won European Cups in 68 and 99 and then comparing it to the way City won theirs last year is truly a sad indictment of modern football. There are no stories or traditions involved, just pumping in enough money until you eventually win.
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Absolutely.
I doubt any real football fan could argue against this.
 
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