Middle Eastlands – A Manchester City Revolution?

Harry Redknapp must have been raging. Dunking a Digestive biscuit into his mid-morning tea, the unexpected purchase of Manchester City by a consortium of billionaires from Abu Dhabi can only have left a bitter taste in his mouth. Its bad enough there being a credit crunch, the effects of which have this summer denied him the permission to open up the Portsmouth purse strings as much as he’d have liked. But to have to sit there and look on green with envy while Mark Hughes and a group of brash Arabian upstarts swoop in and deny him his customary starring role as main protagonist on transfer deadline day? I’m not ‘avin it.

In the end he managed to sign one (just one!!) player on the final day of the transfer window as opposed to the 300 he usually buys, but without doubt the major story of D-Day 2008 (its been marketed so well I’m actually comparing it to a battle) involved the frantic events at Eastlands. Like the Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano to West Ham United deals of 2006, the breaking news sent shockwaves throughout English football. Dimitar Berbatov to Manchester City? Come on, don’t be silly. Seriously?

Well, almost. It may have been had bitter rivals Manchester United not locked the guy in a cupboard at Carrington and refused to let him out until their own deal for the Bulgarian was done. No bother though because by the time the clock struck midnight City, having already ruffled the feathers of one Premier League aristocrat, decided to aim a sharp, defiant blow to the jugular of another managing, incredibly, to pinch Robinho from under Chelsea’s nose.

“We’re confident it will happen,” Peter Kenyon had said of Chelsea’s move for the player a few days earlier, wearing the smarmy look of self-satisfaction that is his trademark. “There are no hitches, it’s just a lengthy process.” Er, afraid not Pete. Seems he learnt nothing from the complete mess he made of Ronaldinho’s proposed move to former employers United five years ago then. This time his inept fumblings were to City’s benefit, and so the club that has lived for so long in the shadows of its red neighbour ended up smashing the British transfer record almost effortlessly.

“We would like to be a lot better than last season, and we are eager for trophies next season,” announced Dr Sulaiman Al-Fahim, a spokesman for The Abu Dhabi United Group that has purchased the club.“We are going to be the biggest club in the world, bigger than both Real Madrid and Manchester United,” he also boasted whilst discussing audacious plans to sign Cristiano Ronaldo, plans that would no doubt have proved hilarious to both sets of supporters in Manchester, for different reasons. Bold statements.

We have been here before of course, but only time will tell if City turn out to be another Fulham (‘We will be the Manchester United of the South!!’) or another Chelsea. The signing of Robinho fully represents the marquee transfer that the club were after, a profile-raising smash hit to put Manchester City on the map. But can the club really push on and make the Champions League between now and 2009-2010? In Mark Hughes they have a very talented manager and slowly the squad is beginning to show promise, but can tangible success be so easily acquired?

The pundits, journalists and fans that sit around endlessly complaining about the Premier League’s supposed lack of competition will no doubt be delighted at the prospect of a fifth superpower there to shake it all up a bit, but has English football really arrived at a juncture whereby foreign sugardaddies buying up the nation’s football institutions and carelessly throwing millions of pounds around in pursuit of glory is considered the answer? Can further distortion of the already hazy line between the haves and the have-nots seriously be looked upon as a positive for the domestic game?

A senior source involved in the Manchester City deal had this to say. ‘Sheikh Mansour (the major player involved in the takeover) wants to use City to help develop Abu Dhabi into the sporting capital of the Middle East.’ Is that what English football has now become, a vehicle for self-serving, attention-seeking billionaires to boost the egos and reputations of themselves and their own personal interests?

Setting up shop in England with shiny new club in tow, the world’s financial superpowers are desperately trying to outdo each other and, like yachts or high-rise buildings before it, football is now the chosen medium. The Premier League has become akin to a modern day Space Race.

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England, English Premier League, Manchester City, Money Money Money, Robinho, Transfer News