5 into 4 won't go

[coakes]

[quote author=Vlads Quiff link=topic=26731.msg666447#msg666447 date=1220432570]
[quote author=Tinto link=topic=26731.msg666438#msg666438 date=1220432090]
I can't quite remember even though it's not that long ago, but wasn't Chelsea in the champions league already when Roman bought them? They already had a squad capable of challenging... Man City don't (yet). Football wise, when Roman bought them, Chelsea were much stronger than City is now. Also United weren't the team they are now and despite the doom and gloom, we're much stronger now than back then too.

Man City will find it harder than Chelsea to do a 'Chelsea', but as I said in my previous post, the money will tell eventually.
[/quote]

The team may have been better, but Chelsea had over-spent trying to achieve what they couldn't afford, as they did not have a decent enough fan base and sponsors because they were a shit club, they were going into receivership and Roman brought it for a penny.
I think City are a far better structured club and that won't need much work. If they are prepared to spend like they are saying, and learn from Chelsea's mistakes they could do it as quickly. The fact that Chelsea did it so quickly is quite frightening looking at things today

regards
[/quote]

True, but given Chelsea's financial situation at the time, it strikes me that those problems were more likely to be solved via a simple injection of capital than any problems City may have now. I don't see any significant differences between the two (Chelsea under Ranieri and City under Hughes) in terms of squad strength, apart from the fact that Hughes, while highly capable, has yet to prove he is Mourinho's equal, or that beyond Hiddink, I'm not sure there's an outstanding coach available (or otherwise) who could replicate Mourinho's feat.

In terms of popularity, people will always be attracted to winners (real or perceived), and some of them are older than eight. But if City intend to build a global fanbase in the same time Chelsea appear to have done (and I have doubts as to its stability), then the economic situation has changed - there's less disposable income around and £40+ on the latest replica kit suddenly looks frightening.

City might replicate Chelsea's on/off pitch success eventually, but I suspect it'll take longer. Also, Chelsea, for all the money apparently still available, appear to have hit the problem of diminishing returns really quickly. Only time will tell, of course.

 

[spider-Neil]

if the yanks have any sense whatsoever they will sell sooner rather than later.
if we drop out of the top four (real possibility) we will struggle to make our loan repayments, not being in the CL will also mean we wont have that money to put towards transfers so our team will stagnate and we will fall even further behind, also no revenue from a non existant stadium.

do the decent thing and sell up liverpool isn't the cash cow you thought it was going to be, we need someone to put money in rather than take it out.

 

[Vlads Quiff]

[quote author=coakes link=topic=26731.msg666480#msg666480 date=1220434473]
[quote author=Vlads Quiff link=topic=26731.msg666447#msg666447 date=1220432570]
[quote author=Tinto link=topic=26731.msg666438#msg666438 date=1220432090]
I can't quite remember even though it's not that long ago, but wasn't Chelsea in the champions league already when Roman bought them? They already had a squad capable of challenging... Man City don't (yet). Football wise, when Roman bought them, Chelsea were much stronger than City is now. Also United weren't the team they are now and despite the doom and gloom, we're much stronger now than back then too.

Man City will find it harder than Chelsea to do a 'Chelsea', but as I said in my previous post, the money will tell eventually.
[/quote]

The team may have been better, but Chelsea had over-spent trying to achieve what they couldn't afford, as they did not have a decent enough fan base and sponsors because they were a shit club, they were going into receivership and Roman brought it for a penny.
I think City are a far better structured club and that won't need much work. If they are prepared to spend like they are saying, and learn from Chelsea's mistakes they could do it as quickly. The fact that Chelsea did it so quickly is quite frightening looking at things today

regards
[/quote]

True, but given Chelsea's financial situation at the time, it strikes me that those problems were more likely to be solved via a simple injection of capital than any problems City may have now. I don't see any significant differences between the two (Chelsea under Ranieri and City under Hughes) in terms of squad strength, apart from the fact that Hughes, while highly capable, has yet to prove he is Mourinho's equal, or that beyond Hiddink, I'm not sure there's an outstanding coach available (or otherwise) who could replicate Mourinho's feat.

In terms of popularity, people will always be attracted to winners (real or perceived), and some of them are older than eight. But if City intend to build a global fanbase in the same time Chelsea appear to have done (and I have doubts as to its stability), then the economic situation has changed - there's less disposable income around and £40+ on the latest replica kit suddenly looks frightening.

City might replicate Chelsea's on/off pitch success eventually, but I suspect it'll take longer. Also, Chelsea, for all the money apparently still available, appear to have hit the problem of diminishing returns really quickly. Only time will tell, of course.
[/quote]

I think a monkey could manage a super rich club. You don't need charisma, or to have done it at the top level, the money being waved at the mercenary twats does that.
You don't need to have a great sense of recognising potential , as you just buy the best around.
You need a bit of tactical awareness and Hughes has that. Who after saying he is going to spend a billion dollars on players is going to give a fuck about diminishing returns, or replica shirts.
City are already a much bigger club than Chelsea were, there is no reason on this earth why they can't do it just as quickly.

regards

 

[coakes]

[quote author=Vlads Quiff link=topic=26731.msg666529#msg666529 date=1220436462]
[quote author=coakes link=topic=26731.msg666480#msg666480 date=1220434473]
[quote author=Vlads Quiff link=topic=26731.msg666447#msg666447 date=1220432570]
[quote author=Tinto link=topic=26731.msg666438#msg666438 date=1220432090]
I can't quite remember even though it's not that long ago, but wasn't Chelsea in the champions league already when Roman bought them? They already had a squad capable of challenging... Man City don't (yet). Football wise, when Roman bought them, Chelsea were much stronger than City is now. Also United weren't the team they are now and despite the doom and gloom, we're much stronger now than back then too.

Man City will find it harder than Chelsea to do a 'Chelsea', but as I said in my previous post, the money will tell eventually.
[/quote]

The team may have been better, but Chelsea had over-spent trying to achieve what they couldn't afford, as they did not have a decent enough fan base and sponsors because they were a shit club, they were going into receivership and Roman brought it for a penny.
I think City are a far better structured club and that won't need much work. If they are prepared to spend like they are saying, and learn from Chelsea's mistakes they could do it as quickly. The fact that Chelsea did it so quickly is quite frightening looking at things today

regards
[/quote]

True, but given Chelsea's financial situation at the time, it strikes me that those problems were more likely to be solved via a simple injection of capital than any problems City may have now. I don't see any significant differences between the two (Chelsea under Ranieri and City under Hughes) in terms of squad strength, apart from the fact that Hughes, while highly capable, has yet to prove he is Mourinho's equal, or that beyond Hiddink, I'm not sure there's an outstanding coach available (or otherwise) who could replicate Mourinho's feat.

In terms of popularity, people will always be attracted to winners (real or perceived), and some of them are older than eight. But if City intend to build a global fanbase in the same time Chelsea appear to have done (and I have doubts as to its stability), then the economic situation has changed - there's less disposable income around and £40+ on the latest replica kit suddenly looks frightening.

City might replicate Chelsea's on/off pitch success eventually, but I suspect it'll take longer. Also, Chelsea, for all the money apparently still available, appear to have hit the problem of diminishing returns really quickly. Only time will tell, of course.
[/quote]

I think a monkey could manage a super rich club. You don't need charisma, or to have done it at the top level, the money being waved at the mercenary twats does that.
You don't need to have a great sense of recognising potential , as you just buy the best around.
You need a bit of tactical awareness and Hughes has that. Who after saying he is going to spend a billion dollars on players is going to give a fuck about diminishing returns, or replica shirts.
City are already a much bigger club than Chelsea were, there is no reason on this earth why they can't do it just as quickly.

regards
[/quote]

I disagree Vlad. If your squad is full of mercenary twats, or superego's, bought on the whim of the owner or chairman, the manager faces the acute problem exercising some form of power over them, individually and as a whole. That power could come from charisma, tactical awareness, prior success, fear or being cute at dressing room political games. The only real example available is obviously Real Madrid once the Galactico experiment had really kicked in, and that failed in terms of what the expensively assembled squad achieved on the pitch, and these were players who were widely perceived as being the best around.

I think you misunderstood my point about replica shirts and diminishing returns. The purchase of City is about promoting Abu Dhabi, and a billion dollars spent on owning the club is simply a very large advertising budget, and a logical progression from the existing shirt and stadium sponsorship. As such, replica shirts are a very good way of getting highly visible and prolonged exposure, regardless of the club colours, even if its a piss-poor metric of the depth of fan loyalty. Since the new owners are already rich, the financial return is largely secondary to them, even if it remains important to the club. The problem they have is selling the damn things in the face of worsening economic conditions, a problem Chelsea did not face three years ago. To get the same breadth of sales in the same timeframe will be tricky, even assuming that Chelsea have not saturated the market.

I wasn't referring to solely financial returns. Since Chelsea have won the league twice, there is only one way of measuring continued success and one way of measuring further improvement given the investment already made and that which, presumably, will continue to be made. They can only continue to win the league or win the CL. There is no other meaningful metric available, regardless of how much money continues to be spent. In fact, in the absence (hopefully continuing) of winning either, it will be perceived as a fail. City can spend large amounts of money going from ninth to top four, and be judged a success, but will simply run out of meaningful measures of success, even assuming that the relationship between money spent and league position is linear, and it simply isn't, given that spending £34m on Robinho is exactly the same as spending £20m on Robinho, as you don't get a better version of Robinho for the extra £14m, or more importantly, a better version of Robinho than was available to any other buyer.

In short, they may be able to do a Chelsea, but it's likely to take longer, and throwing extra money at the problem isn't likely to significantly shorten the timeframe, or produce a 'better' result.

 

[LFC_DO]

[quote author=spider-neil link=topic=26731.msg666500#msg666500 date=1220435166]
if the yanks have any sense whatsoever they will sell sooner rather than later.
if we drop out of the top four (real possibility) we will struggle to make our loan repayments, not being in the CL will also mean we wont have that money to put towards transfers so our team will stagnate and we will fall even further behind, also no revenue from a non existant stadium.

do the decent thing and sell up liverpool isn't the cash cow you thought it was going to be, we need someone to put money in rather than take it out.
[/quote]


The football business has completely changed this week. Pretty soon it is going to be impossible to make money being a normal successfully run club. How can any club without a rich sugar daddy compete in the transfer market?

The way to make money will be to sell player to the sugar daddy clubs

As painful as this might sound this could be exactly that our owners were hoping for.
Sell a Torres or a Gerrard for £100m to these rich Arabs and they make more money than we would do on the pitch in 5 years. Sell two of these players are you have made 10 years profit.

 

[Le Chacal]

City are not worrying me at all, they'll fight for a top 6 finish. They will attract players only when they start to play CL football on a regular basis.
Robinho will take time to settle and I never really rated him anyway.

The only problem is ourselves and Rafa. If he keeps playing Kuyt on the right and making wrong substitutions during games(like in the last 4 seasons), we're gonna finish 4th again.

 

[LFC_DO]

[quote author=Le Chacal link=topic=26731.msg666794#msg666794 date=1220448096]
City are not worrying me at all, they'll fight for a top 6 finish. They will attract players only when they start to play CL football on a regular basis.
Robinho will take time to settle and I never really rated him anyway.

The only problem is ourselves and Rafa. If he keeps playing Kuyt on the right and making wrong substitutions during games(like in the last 4 seasons), we're gonna finish 4th again.
[/quote]

They may not challenge for fourth this season but if they spent £150m next summer of course they are going to challenge not just us but United and Chelsea!

I think ourselves and Arsenal will soon be left to fight it out for 4th

 

[Vlads Quiff]

Anyone want to temper their original thoughts on this?

regards

 

[spider-Neil]

[quote author=Vlads Quiff link=topic=26731.msg943270#msg943270 date=1252932497]
Anyone want to temper their original thoughts on this?

regards
[/quote]

well this weekend is a massive test for city

 

[Atlas]

[quote author=Le Chacal link=topic=26731.msg666794#msg666794 date=1220448096]
City are not worrying me at all, they'll fight for a top 6 finish. They will attract players only when they start to play CL football on a regular basis.
Robinho will take time to settle and I never really rated him anyway.
[/quote]

They are attracting players, they have the players to be a good top 4 side.
They have purchased a host of players who are already playing in the prem for good top6ish sides, and it has helped them loads.
It will only be a certain amount of time before they get in the top 4 and push out Arsenal or us, it might be this season but it will be soon.

 

[rage]

big year for city. if they fail to get in the champions league it'll delay their progression. if they oust one of the top 4 then i can see them attracting more players and challenging next year.

i do think its only a matter of time before city are top 4 and then they will be fighting for the title. could be as early as next season. 3 seasons at the most.

as to who'll give way - i actually think if utd lose their manager it will be them who give way. most likely it'll be arsenal this season.

 

[Vlads Quiff]

Things are going far better so far than many people gave them credit for in this thread from 12 months ago

regards

 

[Mors]

[quote author=rage link=topic=26731.msg943307#msg943307 date=1252935934]
big year for city. if they fail to get in the champions league it'll delay their progression. if they oust one of the top 4 then i can see them attracting more players and challenging next year.

i do think its only a matter of time before city are top 4 and then they will be fighting for the title. could be as early as next season. 3 seasons at the most.

as to who'll give way - i actually think if utd lose their manager it will be them who give way. most likely it'll be arsenal this season.
[/quote]

I agree. Within 3 seasons these fuckers are going to be competing for the title. I can see it being the Arse making way for them the way things are going.

 

[Jürgen4PM]

Anyone who thinks City don't have a bloody good chance to get a top 4 spot this season is crazy imo.

The only team out of the original top four that looks a certainty to retain its CL spot is the chavs.

 

[TheBunnyman]

[quote author=Vlads Quiff link=topic=26731.msg943311#msg943311 date=1252936166]
Things are going far better so far than many people gave them credit for in this thread from 12 months ago

regards
[/quote]

Yeah. They've got arguably the second strongest squad in the league now, and the fact that they've made a good start has really taken the pressure off Mark Hughes.

IMO there might well be five sides challenging for the league this season - and only four of them will qualify for the CL. Scary stuff in a way, but also exciting. It's like the Top 4 has suddenly announced a relegation clause.

 

[Squiggles]

I don't think I contributed to this thread but in more recent City threads this summer I've always said they'd be challenging the top four, and then they went and had a better summer than I expected.

Adebayor, cunt that he is, will prove to be fine signing because he's an exceptional player.

In a way I'm glad 'cos I never understood the stick Mark Hughes took over the last few years. He proved himself a fine manager at Blackburn then took over a City side, had transfers dictated to him, and ended up with a side lacking a lot of balance - but I don't want them overtaking us!

 

[Paddy]

They will compete for the title next season. No doubt. After two more transfer window's they will have a very impressive squad. Hughes is doing well so far.

 

[keniget]

[quote author=Vlads Quiff link=topic=26731.msg943311#msg943311 date=1252936166]
Things are going far better so far than many people gave them credit for in this thread from 12 months ago

regards
[/quote]

In fairness, most of these posts were made in Sep '08 and they did go on to have a pretty shit season - they only won something stupid like 2 away games and didn't qualify for the UEFA Cup.

This season looks like it'll be very different.

 

[Vlads Quiff]

[quote author=keniget link=topic=26731.msg943370#msg943370 date=1252942866]
[quote author=Vlads Quiff link=topic=26731.msg943311#msg943311 date=1252936166]
Things are going far better so far than many people gave them credit for in this thread from 12 months ago

regards
[/quote]

In fairness, most of these posts were made in Sep '08 and they did go on to have a pretty shit season - they only won something stupid like 2 away games and didn't qualify for the UEFA Cup.

This season looks like it'll be very different.
[/quote]

Yes, but they did not get much of a chance to buy in 08. The majority of the posts said they won't do anything for years and years, it seems it will happen much quicker than that

regards

 

[Jürgen4PM]

If i remember correctly, many posters were happy to write them off whilst they still had Hughes as Manager.

 

[keniget]

Heh, okay.. well, looking back at my own post in this thread, I can at least say I'm not one of the accused!

 

[Rafiagra]

Their big test is next weekend.

I'm looking forward to see what mind games Fergie employs in this week's run-up to it.

 

[Squiggles]

They usually beat United anyway.

 

[Fox]

darn thats the second time an old thread has come up and I thought my old mate foureyes was back !!

Anyway I started a thread in 2007 asking would City win the PL before us (I know its still the league, sky shit ETC)

That was when Sven was originally boss, now its maybe even more of a question.

 

[SummerOnions]

Arsenal are the most under threat i would have said, but that's just me.

 

[Farkmaster]

I knew that City would eventually become a threat, but what is helping them is that they are the only significant team that has moved forward this summer. In all likelihood there will be a wobble, and how they react to that will be more instructive than what we've seen so far.

 

[Molbystwin]

City have definitely got a very good shot at finishing top four this season, this will leave them in a position to sign in the very best players, up and coming or established.

They certainly don't look like backing down judging by the truly monumental wages they are paying and the signing fees.

To suggest that they are not a threat is blind IMO.

That said i still feel that we are a better team than them and will finish above them, this season at least, but then i think we will win it this year so... im clearly mad.... Arsenal again however are showing faults of old and may well drop out to fifth.

 

[Dreambeliever]

[quote author=Vlads Quiff link=topic=26731.msg943270#msg943270 date=1252932497]
Anyone want to temper their original thoughts on this?

regards
[/quote]

It's early doors but City look more than capable of a top 4 this year.

So far it looks like it will be ourselves or Arsenal fighting it out for the fourth place but there is still a long way to go.

It will just means the games against Arsenal may be all the more vital this year.

 

[Ryan]

I think it'd also be foolhardy to rule Portsmouth out of the running at this early stage too.

 

[Frogfish]

I said before the season began that Citeh would challenge Arsenal for 4th.

However I don't understand how some people on here think we are the ones under pressure from Citeh for 4th. Player for player we have a great chance of the title with Chelsea & United both weaker IMO. And Arsenal certainly so.