It's quite incredible that these days, it takes a multi-millionaire to raise a club's profile and win it more columns in newspapers. In the week that was, Thaksin Shinawatra sold his Chairmanship of Manchester City to The Abu Dhabi Group--minutes before the close of the Summer transfer window. In a frantic five minutes,in which most of us were keeping up to date with the Berbatov situation, the Bitters made a host of bids that even Vicente del Bosque in his time as manager of the Real Madrid 'galacticos' would have been embarrassed to make. Making moves for, among others, Robinho, David Villa, Fernando Torres, Fabio Cannavaro and Kaka did beat the story of Henry to United to the title of transfer joke of the month. More still, the Citeh-zens wanted to hijack Dimitar Berbatov from the grasp of United in the same way they had stolen Robinho from under the nose of Chelsea. The new owners of the club have certainly given the lazy journalists a field day. City is now being talked of in the same breath that one mentions Chelsea and Manchester United. A certain phrase that is usually sang at the start of the season was uttered again--'breaking into the top 4'. One wonders what City has now that the current 4 top clubs don't. If anything, there is a load of things that the top clubs, especially Manchester United, have that City don't. Ryan Giggs has come today to criticise the Citeh twarts of their shite history...beg your pardon, THEY DO NOT HAVE A HISTORY. It really does speak volumes for a club like United to go play in South Africa, Nigeria, America, Asia, India if you like, and still maintain capacity crowds in each of those parts of the world. One wonders how many Manchester City fans are outside Great Britain. I personally live in East Africa but I can confirm that the number of City fans in this part of the world can be counted using five fingers.
Actually, the likes of Newcastle United have more fans here than the Bitters. City fans should have learned from Chelsea by now that it is history and not money that makes a club a force to reckon with. United for instance only had to recall the heroics of the 1968 European Cup winning side to match that achievement 40 years later. They had the inspiration from the Munich air disaster on the 50th anniversary to win the cup they would have gone on to win more than 3 times in their careers. Citeh should simply take a leaf from Chelsea and start building on a history that they can refer to half a Century to come--but until then There is only one team in Manchester and the people of New Zealand know it!
