Somewhere over the rainbow .....

[AIDO]

I find the current Man City spend spend spend mentality obscene and a very sad reflection on the way football is going .... coupled with the Chester City and Livingston demise announced today I think we, at lower league level, had better get used to battling against oblivion while the so called rich elite continue to haplessly out spend each other. One consolation is they all can't finish top of their league or even more's to the point, history proves that money DOESN'T AND CAN'T ALWAYS buy success. Let the supporters revel while their club's spend their pot of gold but as Chester, Livingston and indeed perhaps ourselves one day, disappear into the mists of time, let them remember also that such rainbow dreams and pots of gold can disappear just as quickly as a passing cloud on a rare sunny summers day ....

Joleon Lescott at £19 million .... yeah right! ... Good Grief .... I rest my case ...

[Spyman]

Given
Richards
Kompany
Toure
Bridge
Ireland
De Jong
Barry
Robinho
Tevez
Santa Cruz

subs from Adebayor, Wright-Phillips, Onuoha etc

Definitely a top 4 side though, isn't it?!

[Sally Cinnamon]

Given
Richards
Kompany
Toure
Bridge
Ireland
De Jong
Barry
Robinho
Tevez
Santa Cruz

subs from Adebayor, Wright-Phillips, Onuoha etc

Definitely a top 4 side though, isn't it?!

It's certainly a very good squad, but in my opinion i can't see them even competing with the top 4 for at least a season, maybe 2.It will take time for them to gel, and personally i think there are to many big ego's that will distrupped the dressing room.

[Geordie Quaker]

Methinks they will also become for many sides the 'team to beat'; infact, you can imagine opponent managers geeing up their players to play against "that bunch of overpaid prima donna's who are only here for the money".

Their chances of reaching the top four are greatly increased by the fact that they are slowly buying Arsenal.

[Quakerz]

infact, you can imagine opponent managers geeing up their players to play against "that bunch of overpaid prima donna's who are only here for the money".

Would any Premiership manager be able say that to his players with a straight face?

[Geordie Quaker]

Would any Premiership players be clever enough to recognise the irony anyway?

[Jamm]

The wages at that level are making the players even more distant from the fans that pay hard earned wages to watch them. £100,000+ per week is obscene, when those in the stands average maybe £20,000-£30,000 per year. At least at Darlo's level the players are in the same mindset as the fans to an extent, knowing that they have to work hard to earn their more realistic wages with little room for complacency.

[Spyman]

Their chances of reaching the top four are greatly increased by the fact that they are slowly buying Arsenal.

This is what I was thinking. Arsenal as it stands may start next season with Phillipe Senderos back in the side. I wouldn't let him in the Darlo team!

They also have the brittle-boned fpairing of Van Persie and Eduardo up front, although they do have some shite back-up in Niklas Bendtner.

They'll still scrape 4th in the last couple of weeks though, just like they always seem to do

Back to Man City, considering Tevez left Utd because he couldn't get a game, is he going to be any better off vying with Robinho, Adebayor, Santa Cruz and Bellamy? They all consistantly score more goals than him.

[Geordie Quaker]

And part of me wonders what the lovely Mr Bellamy is thinking, given the fact he moved there as a nailed on first team player and may end up getting about as many games as Craig James.

[fcdarlo]

I read an article that was making the point than on one hand it can been seen as a good thing, i.e. upsetting the balance of the established top 4, I agree, I think upsetting the top 4 is required, however I would much rather have seen Villa, Everton do it on merit, and I think there chance may have come this season with Arsenal seeming to be struggling. However then Mr Arab comes in and buys City (lets be honest it could have been one of 7 or 8 clubs) and I think makes Villa & Everton’s job that much harder, which is a shame as I think there time had come.

I think City will not be that great from the off, too many egos, too many strikers and too weak at the back (in terms of the squad), but they will be good enough to compete for 4th with Arsenal, Villa, Everton and perhaps a surprise package.

I am not sure if it would be better for the game in England and throughout Europe for the G14 clubs (I know they got broken up but still exist in principle) got there way and turned out in a European League and left the rest of us too it. Take United, Liverpool and Chelsea out of this years premier league and I think it would be much more exciting.

[fcdarlo]

And too add to that on Man City, this from football365 comparing a football team to a woman. Very funny I thought

The team doesn't add up, if you had to draw a diagram as woman, it should be something like, let's say Megan Fox, you have ample proportions all over, instead, City look more like Lola Ferrari, I could go into detail about this, but you get the gist of it, too much boob at city in comparison with other departments, though I do accept that the addition of an underperforming Kolo Toure may sort all of this out and add some arse. This, therefore is why they could fall flat on there faces, maybe giant breasts, and tumble a couple of positions down, which I believe many would find hilarious.

[SonOfManHitByDrum]

City's spending isn't really much greater than United's, only City's has happened over a relatively short period of time. Because of the financial benefits of the Champions League, as a general rule only those that are in the competition can afford to spend at the level that United/Chelsea/etc do. In order to build a team that can seriously compete with these teams, heavy investment is needed. It's a vicious cycle in that only those already competing in the competition can afford to buy the players capable of qualifying for the competition. It strikes me as odd that people complain about the Premiership being boring with only four teams competing, yet when another team finds itself in a position to challenge, everyone seems to criticise them.

Some figures...

Man City (£202M) - Man United (£187M+?)

Shav Given (£6M) - Edwin Van der Sar (£2M)
Micah Richards (YA) - Gary Neville (YA)
Kolo Toure (£16M) - Rio Ferdinand (£30M)
Vincent Kompany (£6M) - Nemanja Vidic (£7M)
Wayne Bridge (£14M) - Patrice Evra (£5M)
Nigel de Jong (£16M) - Michael Carrick (£18M)
Gareth Barry (£12M) - Anderson (£18M)
Stephen Ireland (YA) - Nani (£17M)
Robinho (£32M) - Antonio Valencia (£16M)
Carlos Tevez (£25M) - Wayne Rooney (£25M)
Emanuel Adebayor (£25M) - Dimitar Berbatov (£31M)

Stuart Taylor (free) - Ben Foster (£1M)
Nedum Onouha (YA) - Rafael (?)
Pablo Zabaleta (£6M) - Jonny Evans (YA)
Martin Petrov (£5M) - Owen Hargreaves (£17M)
Shaun Wright-Phillips (YA/£8M) - Paul Scholes (YA)
Craig Bellamy (£14M) - Ryan Giggs (YA)
Roque Santa Cruz (£17M) - Michael Owen (free)

If one wanted to be pedantic, City sold Wright-Phillips for £21M and bought him for £8, therefore his actual 'cost' would be -£13M, bringing the total for the city team to £181M (and thus arguably making United's first-choice 18 more expensive than City's).

[AIDO]

I think the WHOLE point of this thread has been totally lost ....