Todays Times Article

[johnny crossan]

Club That Hit The..........





in case you are interested and don't want to pay

[Crossie]

Cheers.

It's only what it cost to catch up. We could never have dreamed of thinking about the top 4 unless the type of takeover we had, happened.

We all know what huge shit we were in. The Sheik could have taken over ANY club in the world with his money, but he picked us, mostly thanks to Frank I reckon.

Even if he stopped and left now, we would be a force for years and years, the pure value of the club has sky rocketed.

We deserved it, what goes around comes around, Karma for you etc etc etc.

Division 3, 32,000 regulars, decades of waste followed by peanuts for transfers, finally, it was all worth it.

We will win something this year or next year, no doubt.

[paulmclaren]

Nice article :)
I wonder if in say, 3 years time, we will be 'the biggest' club in the world?

[Abu Dhabi]

"The idea is to keep the tea lady as included as Carlos Tevez"

and we didnt believe those ITKs!!

[Ted Hughes]

Cheers for the effort.

Nice to see someone just write an article without filling it with barbed comments. Once again there's mention of the plans for producing our own players. That's a reccurring theme since the 1st days of the takeover but has been, & still is, mostly ignored by media & fans alike in the attempts to discredit the club or Marwood or Hughes or anyone else who fits in with the various different agendas which have been pushed down people's throats over the past few seasons.

[Citizen of Oslo]

Thanks. I just want to add that for all the money we have spent this summer, it is on young and promising players. That hasn't been the case since the 80's with Machin and Allison before him.

[Beefymcfc]

Good effort mate and a decent article, nothing too anti-City in that.

What I'd like to know is what has changed in the minds of some of the media? I was expecting a serious back-lash after losing to Sunderland, and even the Robinho deal has not been thrown back in our face. I do wonder whether it's the guys at the top having a quiet word or if after the recent signings, they realise that we are not going to take second best and really are aiming for the stars?

I've not heard anything about our owners dumping us, lately; have you?

[BobKowalski]

Good effort mate and a decent article, nothing too anti-City in that.

What I'd like to know is what has changed in the minds of some of the media? I was expecting a serious back-lash after losing to Sunderland, and even the Robinho deal has not been thrown back in our face. I do wonder whether it's the guys at the top having a quiet word or if after the recent signings, they realise that we are not going to take second best and really are aiming for the stars?

I've not heard anything about our owners dumping us, lately; have you?

I felt there were signs of a different attitude during the summer albeit very patchy but I do think the Liverpool game made a huge impact. Not just the result but the manner of the result. We looked a top class outfit and we are still in the 'settling in phase'. Sunderland didn't change that because 9 times out of 10 we would have won or come away with something from the game. Picking Hart over Given and playing 6 English players doesn't hurt us either.

Some like Paul Hayward are giving us stick with the waste and folly of Robbie and belittling the infrastructure changes and expenditure as City rushing out stats to camouflage the fact the owners no nothing about football etc etc. Except that Robbie was not about football. Signing Robbie was largely symbolic and designed to create a publicity splash and serve notice that there was a new player in town. Getting Robbie off the books and getting cash for him was an excellent bit of work to go alongside the excellent work done on transfers this summer. Its a shame Robbie didn't work out but he served his initial purpose. I do think that the 'City make profit on Robbie' line that SSN seemed to be peddling was a serious stretch. Still it was nice having the media suck us off for a bit.

[Dronny]

Good effort mate and a decent article, nothing too anti-City in that.

What I'd like to know is what has changed in the minds of some of the media? I was expecting a serious back-lash after losing to Sunderland, and even the Robinho deal has not been thrown back in our face. I do wonder whether it's the guys at the top having a quiet word or if after the recent signings, they realise that we are not going to take second best and really are aiming for the stars?

I've not heard anything about our owners dumping us, lately; have you?

I felt there were signs of a different attitude during the summer albeit very patchy but I do think the Liverpool game made a huge impact. Not just the result but the manner of the result. We looked a top class outfit and we are still in the 'settling in phase'. Sunderland didn't change that because 9 times out of 10 we would have won or come away with something from the game. Picking Hart over Given and playing 6 English players doesn't hurt us either.

Some like Paul Hayward are giving us stick with the waste and folly of Robbie and belittling the infrastructure changes and expenditure as City rushing out stats to camouflage the fact the owners no nothing about football etc etc. Except that Robbie was not about football. Signing Robbie was largely symbolic and designed to create a publicity splash and serve notice that there was a new player in town. Getting Robbie off the books and getting cash for him was an excellent bit of work to go alongside the excellent work done on transfers this summer. Its a shame Robbie didn't work out but he served his initial purpose. I do think that the 'City make profit on Robbie' line that SSN seemed to be peddling was a serious stretch. Still it was nice having the media suck us off for a bit.

I do hope we've said to Milan, "don't worry about paying anything this year, lets load the payments over the next 3-4 yrs". That way we get a nice return to offset our expenditure for Platini's madcap regulations.......that's assuming we paid for Robby in full?

[BobKowalski]

Good effort mate and a decent article, nothing too anti-City in that.

What I'd like to know is what has changed in the minds of some of the media? I was expecting a serious back-lash after losing to Sunderland, and even the Robinho deal has not been thrown back in our face. I do wonder whether it's the guys at the top having a quiet word or if after the recent signings, they realise that we are not going to take second best and really are aiming for the stars?

I've not heard anything about our owners dumping us, lately; have you?

I felt there were signs of a different attitude during the summer albeit very patchy but I do think the Liverpool game made a huge impact. Not just the result but the manner of the result. We looked a top class outfit and we are still in the 'settling in phase'. Sunderland didn't change that because 9 times out of 10 we would have won or come away with something from the game. Picking Hart over Given and playing 6 English players doesn't hurt us either.

Some like Paul Hayward are giving us stick with the waste and folly of Robbie and belittling the infrastructure changes and expenditure as City rushing out stats to camouflage the fact the owners no nothing about football etc etc. Except that Robbie was not about football. Signing Robbie was largely symbolic and designed to create a publicity splash and serve notice that there was a new player in town. Getting Robbie off the books and getting cash for him was an excellent bit of work to go alongside the excellent work done on transfers this summer. Its a shame Robbie didn't work out but he served his initial purpose. I do think that the 'City make profit on Robbie' line that SSN seemed to be peddling was a serious stretch. Still it was nice having the media suck us off for a bit.

I do hope we've said to Milan, "don't worry about paying anything this year, lets load the payments over the next 3-4 yrs". That way we get a nice return to offset our expenditure for Platini's madcap regulations.......that's assuming we paid for Robby in full?

Good point and very possible. This years income and expenditure doesn't count towards the new regulations so loading all the spending in this year and deferring income into the next year or two makes sense. Pretty sure we paid in full for Robbie. It was very much a 'how much do you want and here it is in full' sort of deal. It was a statement of intent and caused Abramovich to get up and walk away from the Robbie deal knowing it was pointless getting into a pissing match.