da heads bet： Sheikh Mansour’s takeover of Manchester City was supposed to herald a new era of glory for the blue half of the city. Arab millions to fuel a hungering for success, you could have thought the transition to European dominance would have been an easy one.
da gbg bet： The first top division league title in well over 40 years and an FA cup win to boot, the new owners have undoubtedly brought success with them, but for a club that has invested so much on the pitch we could have expected a bit more by now.
City have matched the spending power of the worlds top clubs throughout the current owners tenure and the last four summer windows have all seen the club eclipse the £50m mark on player acquisitions. After over 5 years under the current regime City now have a squad to rival any, the likes of Aguero, Silva and Toure would comfortable make it into any of the Premier League’s best sides.
So if City have a squad on a par with their continental rivals, why the lack of silverware?
Not only have City failed to win a European gong, they haven’t ever made it past the group stages of the Champions League. Struggling to put away sides of Ajax’s calibre is clearly not good enough for a side of City’s quality and it is understandable that the owner’s grew frustrated with Mancini’s inability to make it work on the continental level.
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City’s squad aside, their struggles aren’t exactly surprising. The Chelsea experiment proved the difficulty of trying to build a multi-million pound super team from relatively humble beginnings. You can have the world’s best at your disposal but building a team still takes time, at City there doesn’t seem to be this understanding; the same sort of short-termism that has plagued Chelsea.
Even now Pellegrini is struggling to grapple with enormity of the task, problems away from the ambient surroundings of the Etihad are signs of a team lacking that cohesion and unity. It may seem a little bit daft, but if City really want to start achieving silverware consistently they need to cut out there excessive spending. An influx of five or more new players may well boost shirt sales, but in the short-term it plagues the chemistry of the side and when City do these overhaul’s so regularly it become a problem.
You could even accuse me of being a little short-termist, five years in and we are still in the relatively early stages of the Arab revolution. That said five years is long enough to assess rights and wrongs of the project and clearly the club should be achieving more even at this stage.
For me consistent Premier League titles are further down the line, but to compete on the domestic and European level regularly is not an unreasonable thought. By now City should be pushing teams hard at the top of the league and making their way into the latter stages of the Champions League. As of yet the only season they really pushed at the top was the year that they won the thing, an inconsistency down in the main to their apparent desire for upheaval and change.
I have already mentioned their Champions League tribulations, and really when sides as inferior as Celtic are making it through it is slightly embarrassing. To fail once is understandable, City are on a learning curve, but to repeat the feat is a clear underachievement.
Sheikh Mansour clearly has ambitions to make City Europe’s best side, and with these kind of lofty targets the degree of patience is naturally limited. How long will he wait to achieve his goals?
Based on his past dealings you wouldn’t think too long, we have already seen Hughes and Mancini pass through the exit door, and if Pellegrini doesn’t meet the grade you can expect the same fate.
So no City haven’t made the progress expected of them, the couple of trophies they have won are mere short change from the unprecedented investment in their club over the last few years.
Yet we shouldn’t be surprised in the slightest, a hungering for short-term success often puts pay to the development of a side and at City they are doing so in a similar mould to Chelsea before them.
Time for a bit of patience at City.
Should City have achieved more with the resources they boast?
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