“In cold business terms, Premiership football is one of the best entertainment products in the world and we see this as a sound business investment. That being said, we understand that we need to put money in to the get the club to where we believe it can be — and where we think you, the fans, want it to be.”
Sheikh Mansour in an open letter to Manchester City supporters, September 2008 It helps to be sceptical when it comes to the sticky issue of football ownership these days. Too many would-be saviours have, after all, bought into Barclays Premier League clubs in recent seasons citing huge ambitions that turned out to be little more than hollow promises.
Liverpool supporters, for example, will never forget how Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr, upon their takeover at Anfield in February 2007, made a big play about how they would not allow the club to sink into the red in the same way as Manchester United had under the ownership of the Glazer family.
Sixteen months later, KPMG, the club’s auditor, warned of a “material uncertainty which may cast significant doubt upon the group’s ability to continue as a going concern” after the latest accounts revealed that Liverpool paid £36.5 million in interest on their enormous debts in the financial year ending July 31, 2008.
It was no different at Manchester City. Thaksin Shinawatra had vowed to transform City into a football superpower when he bought the club in July 2007, only for his regime to teeter on the brink of financial collapse during its final weeks as the former Thai Prime Minister faced corruption charges in his homeland.
By the time Sheikh Mansour rolled up, out of the blue, and took City off Thaksin’s hands precisely a year ago today, cynicism was rife. After the initial euphoria that greeted the Arab billionaire’s purchase of the club, fuelled principally by the remarkable British record £34.2 million outlay on Robinho, the Brazil forward, from Real Madrid — all of which was paid up front — supporters would have been remiss not to ask if it was all too good to be true. A flight of fancy, a dream destined to be shattered, maybe?
Twelve months and £750 million later, such questions seem mildly absurd. That is not to say that there have not been lows along the way — anyone who watched City lose 3-0 to Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup third round in January would testify to that — but the club’s transformation over the past year has been one of the most significant stories of the Premier League era.
For Mark Hughes, the man charged with overseeing the masterplan — or “project”, as they rather cringingly like to call it at the club — it has been, at once, the most rewarding and terrifying period of a colourful career, one, at times, he must have wondered if he would survive.
“People will look back at this period of City’s history and probably view it with incredulity because of what’s happened and everything we’ve had to go through,” Hughes reflected yesterday.
“But we’ve gone through the bad part and everything in the future will be more positive and better for the club as a whole. It’s been stimulating, it’s been frustrating, it’s been worrying at times for everybody because no one could quite predict how it was going to pan out, but where we are now is a hell of a better place than we were 12 months ago.
“You can never tell which way it’s going to go. I mean, worry surrounds football, it’s not just something we’ve had a big deal of. There were times when it was really difficult for everybody, but we were very strong as a group and the support I had from Sheikh Mansour and Khaldoon [al-Mubarak, the chairman] was important in that respect.
“But I told them exactly where we were, what was needed and never really veered from the same message, although if I had done and started trying to protect my own position by saying, ‘It’s his fault or someone else’s fault,’ then that would not have rung true with them. I was consistent in my message, told them what needed to be done, and, in fairness, they have gone out and done it.
“You hope you get to this point and all the promises that are made and plans that have been put in place come to fruition, and I have to say most of them have done.”
A quick glance at the numbers will doubtless horrify the likes of Michel Platini, the Uefa president, who seems to view billionaire benefactors as a scourge, but as mind-boggling as the statistics are, they also offer an insight into just how costly pursuing success can be for clubs long starved of it.
The £196.7 million that City have paid in transfer fees for 14 players under Sheikh Mansour is dwarfed by the £342.6 million committed on wages for new signings and those players, such as Stephen Ireland, who have been fortunate enough to secure lucrative new deals, although often lost in all this is the money spent on improving the infrastructure of the club, from the training ground to the youth academy.
To the vast majority, such numbers must appear unsustainable, but while City are unlikely to do quite so much business in the space of one year again, the outlay must be put in context. On the day City signed Gareth Barry, the England midfield player, from Aston Villa for £12 million, Sheikh Mansour made a £1.4 billion profit selling the 11 per cent stake in Barclays he had purchased only seven months earlier.
“It’s unprecedented, really, the amount of business we have done and we won’t go through this process again because we won’t need to,” Hughes said. “We feel we have the building blocks in place now that we needed.”
Whether that is enough to bring Champions League football to the City of Manchester Stadium soon remains to be seen, but one thing is certain — the club will not be lacking an owner who stays true to his word.
Source