Are Manchester City actually as stupid as we take them for?

By: Rob | May 9th, 2009

Another week, another £50m megastar has spurned Manchester City in a transfer that was never ever going to happen. Raúl has apparently told City where to put it. You know, the Raul who has spent 156 years at Real Madrid, and despite occasional noises of discontent (in the galacticos era) he’s always been loyal to Real.

After the whole Kaka affair, which seemed to end up being a clever PR gamble by the detestable Silvio Berlusconi, I have to wonder – were Manchester City really in for Raul, or Buffon, or Henry, or Villa, or Eto’o? Because every week it seems some superstar or other is saying “yeah…no thanks” to City.

Or are the press just bored and trying to create easy stories?

Because as rich as City clearly are, obviously they aren’t going to be able to buy Raul – or any other top-level superstar. They can offer money sure, but after that? Fergie complained for years that players would rather go to London than Manchester which always left him at a disadvantage, so what hope do a club not in the Champions League have?

We’re supposed to believe the Press image of the Man City owners – who played into it themselves with their early talk of turning City into a superclub – who are these naiive idiots who have no idea about the game and what players want. Do you know what? I don’t think its true anymore, even if it was true to begin with. I think they know exactly what they’re in for. I haven’t for example seen an actual quote, recently at least, saying they wanted to buy every bloody player in the world.

The lucked out with Robinho – he gets alot of stick, but at the end of the day, he burned his bridges in Madrid thinking Chelsea wanted him, and then The Blues decided he was too expensive and basically left him with absolutely nowhere to go. City gave him a way out to an extent, and indeed a lease of life to some degree. You can’t blame him for taking it – it was that or the Real bench.

However, they got Robinho partly because it was a surprise move. Now clubs are aware of City’s position, they’re not going to benifit in exactly the same way.

That isn’t to say they can buy no-one. Certainly, they’ll be able to buy a whole host of players over the summer. But it is possible that there will only be a certain type of player that they’ll be able to get – a slightly damaged player.

They’ll be able to get greedy players sure, and then there are the ones who have some other temprement problem – off the top of my head someone like Cassano (I’m not saying they can/will sign Cassano) who is a talented player, but has severe temprement issues, that might preclude the top clubs from getting him. After that they can probably get a few lesser players on the way out of Valencia, and most players who are in and around the same sort of position City are in the table. There’s also the “MLS Option” of just buying once-great players well past their use-by dates looking for some nice retirement money.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see next season’s City – a renegade bunch of the above – it could either be the most brilliantly explosive team of the ever, or a team that is just going to go bang in their faces. Possibly both.

They should keep Mark Hughes, but I don’t think they will. There is no doubt in Sparky’s ability as a manager – he nearly got Wales to a World Cup! – but he needs to have some element of control, and I think the owners will want to bring in their own man who will be able to start building this new City from scratch.