I don't get how they can go from scraping results against Wolves, Newcastle and Brighton recently to turning on the style in the last three games?? Seems like a different team to the one against Liverpool and Hoffenheim for example.
Varchester City 18/19 discussion
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
Well Southampton are pretty bad in particular, and that’s before talking about their manager Mark Hughes.
Performance enhancing drugs! Clear as day.
I want us to beat them with him at the helm. I want us to beat them at their best. We need to get our shit together as a club.
Easing our way into the season and gaining momentum, like every other side aims to do?
City and Psg are up to their necks according to football leaks in the new super League plans though...
Both are named as part of the 11 un-relegatable clubs...
City were also in the group of pl clubs who held secret talks according to said leaks.
The idea behind the creation of such a league is to give all the clubs involved (United, Real, Barca, Juve, Bayern, whomever) the opportunity to disassociate themselves from the illegitimate ones such as City and PSG, leaving behind the human rights issues, the circumventing of FFP via suspect sponsorship deals, the bribery scandals that have recently come to light, the blowing of all competition aside through the devastating force of unrivalled financial power etc etc once and for all. In short, make the playground even and free from tyrannical dictatorships once more.
Allowing them to tag along would only serve to invalidate the purpose of the entire project.
If you believe that, you're a sucker!
absolutely fair.
Not really.
Bundesliga
2012/13 - Bayern
2013/14 - Bayern
2014/15 - Bayern
2015/16 - Bayern
2016/17 - Bayern
2017/18 - Bayern
Premier League
2012/13 - Man Utd
2013/14 - Man City
2014/15 - Cheslea
2015/16 - Leicester City
2016/17 - Chelsea
2017/18 - Man City
We can but it doesn't look like we have the fight to take them on. Like there's a resignation around the club that we can't compete. Despite being a rich club ourselves. They can't get any better than they are right now so the onus is on the other teams to catch up.
That's not gaining momentum, momentum is gained over the course of weeks, your results have been sporadic until the last few games, all of a sudden it's back to last seasons high press 110% all the time football, just like that.
Not sure how any fan can respect City. I dislike Liverpool more but grudgingly respect the fact that they are a proper club. Unlike City who are just a franchise that could have been done to any club.
Yet that is exactly what they are doing...
Yeah. Liverpool, Spurs, Arsenal and even Chelsea are examples of sides who can be relatively successful without breaking the bank over the last 15 years.
I hate the City argument of FFP protecting the elite, especially since Utd didn't outspend the competition during the height of our success.
Who are they protecting exactly?
I just find them to be a club of excuses and what-aboutisms.
Last 15 years without breaking the bank:
Arsenal - 1 PL, 4 FA Cups,
Liverpool - 1 CL and 1 FA Cup
Spurs - 1 League Cup (on a par with Swansea, Middlesborough and Birmingham), they've done worse in terms of success than Leicester, Wigan and Portsmouth (who have all won bigger trophies).
As for Chelsea not breaking the bank did you forget 2003-2007 were in the last 15 years? And fair play to them because they buried Wengers Arsenal in spending big.
Agreed completely.
Youre not disproving my point though. They were up against Sir Alex on a budget ( so no finanical muscling there) but they were still competitive. Utd didn't win because of this fabled status quo that City fans tells us needed over 2b to break.
A Sir Alex less Utd would have been a lot more even in terms of silverware.
I just fail to see how this narrative works when poorer clubs regularly finish above us?
I'm a die-hard United fan and I feckin hate City and their lottery win. But you need to check yourself. Their ownership has come in with a business acumen that far surpasses most of these other billionaire takeovers.
1) take over City. They could have come in for a number of other clubs. Instead they targeted England's most successful club and business. Classic case of any fame is good fame. Noisy neighbors? Yeah, they got the spotlight on them now
2) so many (incl. me) are all so cynical, jealous and bitter about the unfathomable amounts of money being thrown around by City. But take a step back. How else do you knock Manchester feckin United off their perch?! A club whose three decades of success coinicided with globalization of English football and an influx of financial wealth and marketing wet-dream type exposure. Abramovich naively threw money at his team and lucked out with a once in generation manager in Jose to put Chelsea in the fold. Still, that was in the early 2000s
3) Marketing and sales. Again, we all laugh at City's Twitter wars, their billboards etc. Manchester feckin United launched their YouTube and IG pages when? City has been overly aggressive in their digital media campaigns, but if there's any decade where exposure is important , good or bad it's now. You Manchester locals may still laugh at the Emptihad .Over in the states, too many of the youth leagues are full of kids following their City idols on all social media , video games and so on.
4) Globalization. I live in NYC and after getting to grips with the ownership, I've started going to NYFC games and cheering on the local ewww sky blue. Can someone explain to me how New York City's football team (Red Bulls play in a waste dump in New Jersey that's a pain in the ass to access) is a sibling of Manchester City? How the feck did we let this happen???? Fair play to Citys ownership. That's some vision there.
5) Make it rain. Bring in the most progessive manager in the present game , getting the deal set up years inadvance. Be prepared to tinker and throw money around for almost a decade til it clicks. Manage your fecking risk by looking at the big picture. City are relevant now. They have rewritten history of the English Premier League. They planned for the long term, both in England and in the rest of the world.
United fans whinging about the money these spent by other clubs need to get some perspective. WE are the bloody trust fund kids that have gambled and boozed away our inheritance. No one manager or group of players is to blame. But feck me, we need to stop being pennywise, pound foolish or we will be completely overtaken by more ambitious and visionary football clubs .
I agree with most of what you say but:
1) There are other ways to knock teams off their perch. Like a certain club from Manchester overtook a Merseyside club some decades ago.
2) Yes, they are trying hard to become globally relevant. But why do they need try this hard for that? All these clubs like Barcelona, the Madrid clubs, the german top two other relevant clubs don't need the support of digital media to lure in supporters. Play good football consistently and you will gain fans. But that's not the case as everyone knows about the roots of this artificial bought out success.
3) Manchester city did nothing to knock United off their perch. It was our own undoing. Where each decision city made to improve their club, we consistently made the wrong choices - Moyes, a relic in LvG, Mourinho (who suits the club charisma wise but not footballing principles or anything of that sort).
4) Agree about other things like DoF, global network with NYFC, Girona, Melbourne.. but still there's some shady stuff going around (deal with Guardiola's brother in case of Girona to lure Pep manage city). Every penny they throw belongs to the owner and every sponsorship deal is bloated to show consistency with FFP.
5) Take the example of Liverpool. It hurts to see them do so well these days but that's how a proper club works. Identify the path and build upon it. Give it some time.
6) Manchester United for all that has happened in last 6 years, are still able to fill up their stadium. This is City's golden era and you know where i am headed to with this.
Everything is good and rosy when things are going well. Everyone said the same about Real, same about Barca 2008-12, Bayern. There comes a cycle in football. Real and Bayern have reached the end of that and need to do some serious rebuilding. I am sure one day Pep will leave and the bed won't be full of roses for them.
Of course I am disproving your point, you said Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs, one spent money and the other two we agree won the grand total of feck all (with no disrespect to said clubs).
I also never said you can't win without money, its just unsustainable unless you are Sir Alex, lets be honest he turned a hell of a lot of football on its head and beat Mancini's City with a team that would have come 5th under anyone else. Sir Alex though had most the biggest signings in the league outside of Chelsea (pre City). What they could have done had Sir Alex not been there counts for feck all because he was there. I'd argue had he not been, Chelsea would have more titles but not Liverpool, Arsenal or Spurs.
The others finished above you for 4 times or so each in the last 15 years so what did you do?
Last season you spent a shit load and overtook them all, came 2nd, the reality is since Arsenal's last title, the 3 biggest spending clubs with the most expensive players are City, United and Chelsea by a fair margin and that is where all but one title went. Its not coincidence.
You are also Manchester United, you've always had the money to go and buy the most expensive players, you may not have signed as many players but you set transfer records in 00 and 01, Chelsea didn't break till 06 despite their at the time record spending. You were quite entitled to do that as well.
Your 90's successes were on a playing field that was fairly level. By the early 2000's you were financially dominant over all the league till Chelsea and then the Glazers happened. Football has moved on a lot since the mid 90's, have a glance at the last winners of Serie A in a list, or the Bundesliga or Spain. Yes there will be the occasional Dortmund, Atletico and even the rare Leicester but those teams will get picked apart by the Bayerns, Uniteds, Reals and Barca's (Atletico being an exception) and now the Cities, PSG's as well.
Why are they so dominant? because Bayern buy half the challenging team in the Bundesliga.
Look what happened to Dortmund... Lewandowski, Gotze, Hummels all to Bayern, Kagawa, Gundogan to the prem.. and now Goretzka, Gnabry etc.. they just hoover up the top talent.
Napoli are getting close to Juve.. Higuain for £70m. Again they just pick who they want from other clubs in that country, why because their cheque book is biggest.
Sure United might not have won as much without Sir Alex because of what he built, but what he did was build a fallen/sleeping giant back into a monster. You were doing the exact same, cherry picking the leagues best talent.. Cole, Rio, Rooney etc.. It was Chelsea who stopped the premier league turning into the Bundesliga and how did they stop it, they were lucky enough to get an owner with a bigger cheque book.
Its not nice, its not pretty but it is modern football and has been since well before City.
Yes there will be the odd La Masia or class of 92 but look at Barca now.. Valenica are on the up, not once Barca take Andre Gomes and Alcacer off them.
Sevilla have given up Rakitic, Vidal and Lenglet to them.
Don't get me wrong, City do the same now that they can. Mahrez, half of Arsenal (Nasri, Clichy, Sagna, Toure) half of Aston Villa (Barry, Milner, Delph). Liverpool do it (to Southampton mainly) and Sir Alex used to do it to. It's football and has been for quite a while.
Fulham are building a good team starting to compete for trophies.. Not without Van der Sar or Saha.
That is why money is important, it allows teams to sustain success and stops the vultures from circling when you do.
Sorry about the novel length post, I get bored sometimes.
1 - Decades ago... you said it there, football now is not 90s football.
2 - Again we live in a different age (see your point one), those clubs built huge fanbases in a different era.. arguably a better era for kids, but the reality is now more kids know Pewdiepie or DanTdm or whatever the lastest cool youtuber is than know (tv, movie and sports stars). It why Paul Pogba is such a brand. It's a sad world but even players have to market and well whore themselves out on social platforms for their brand to build. Football clubs are not better, look at the twitters of half the german clubs, or Roma or whoever...
3 - Yes, you made dumb decision after dumb decision, guess who else did that at boardroom level? Appointed bad managers, signed the wrong players? Liverpool. To knock any giant off their perch they have to shoot themselves in the foot. Also I think it took more than 1 club to know United, it took Chelsea, City and boardroom incompetence and even now you are still winning trophies.
4&5 - Kind of the same, get a clear path and build towards it, it took Liverpool nearly 20 years to sort their shit out and get a clear vision. Before that it was incompetent decision after incompetent decision. United will get it right eventually but possibly without Woodward or with a DoF and Woodward keeping out of football matters.
6 - As I've said many times, we can't manufacture fans. Are United fans of match going age going to abandon United because City win a few trophies? Nope. Any team? Nope, well maybe a few glory hunters.
Like Chelsea we have to play the long game, keep sustained winning and the support will eventually come. I've lived in the arse end of Ireland since 7 (30 years ago). I laughed at all the kids suddenly supporting Chelsea in 05/06 with Duff on the back of their shirts.
Funny thing is now you see an awful lot of Chelsea shirts on adults knocking around the cities (tiny in comparison to United, Liverpool and Arsenal) but as Spurs, Everton and Leeds kits have been disappearing Chelsea ones have been growing. Said it before and I'll say it again, Rome wasn't bought in a day.
On the last part, I agree, Pep won't stay forever, in fact I think we'll get maybe 2-3 more seasons from him. We'll have our ups and our downs. Our successes and our failures and we will most likely never see a team the likes of this again. We have to hope that success now wins over fans for the future. We're not going to sway people who have supported other clubs since childhood to support City because we're winning. In fact most supporters of most clubs wouldn't want those types around anyway.
Liverpool were competitive up until 2011. They fecked it up after that and took them 4 years to get it right again.
I don't see world class players who ply their trade in Spain or Germany peddling their brand like Paul Pogba. You don't really want to be famous for what you do on youtube/IG if you are a footballer.
Talking about your point 6, that's what I had agreed with some poster claiming that whatever that has happened with city could have happened with any other club. City just won the lottery. No offense but I don't think that there is anything 'special' about city. No emotions attached with football. Call me biased or what but its only money and artificialness that springs to my mind when I hear city.
Look at Spurs. They haven't won anything but they are going to get there some day. There are other ways to make a name and I just don't approve of what city/PSG are doing these days. Its not fair for other clubs when you are owned by a sugar daddy. At least this generation will know how all this success was achieved, the money from an oppressive regime like the ones that own city.
Very fair counter points, mate. I used to think much the same. But I've become much more critical looking upward in the hierarchy because of the recent feud between Jose and Woodward.
One big point I cant cant reconcile with is historically successful clubs. Mainly when we're considering what it took to overtake Liverpool or the global appeal of clubs such as Bayern or Juve. Seems like we are both of an age where a lot of our love for the game grew in the 90s? Even if not the case, those two decades - 90s and 2000s - football was a growing industry. And what I mean to focus on is that teams fortunate enough to be run well as footballing entities profited greatly as money flowed in from tv rights and marketing deals . It's a coming together of sport and business.
So to clarify, from a financial standpoint, Liverpool's successes in the 80s and before did not achieve a financial security and platform that Uniteds did in the ensuing decade. Timing is everything. United lucked out. With each ensuing title win under SAF, our global appeal naturally grew and limited broadcasts tended to feature us over the has-beens.
AC Milan, maybe Leeds and Lazio are good case studies to that point of how timing of success is important. Milan are legendary. For me at least and when I grew up. But you'll be doing a hard sell today convincing me they're any sort of relevant in the world game, let alone Italian football. What happened? Indeed there was tremendous mismanagement, financial woe. But it also coincided with a period where Italian football as a whole has become third best maybe even fourth after EPL, La Liga , Bundes. I mean, feel free to correct me with revenue numbers, but that's my personal observation after growing up watching scrubby antenna adjusted Rai tv. Nowadays, I get high production EPL on NBC, La Liga on BeIn, Bundes as well as Serial A on Fox , although the latter never seems quite as well advertised...and is commentated by D list Americans...
This is probably worthy of a sports history and global business development thesis to be fair. Suffice to say I see a huge influence and Man City has done a really good job of approaching their football business as a global product. Their cash flow has been outward for much of their time but it's paid off well, imo, and sets them up nicely. Compare that to our business moves - I'm looking at sponsorship after sponsorship and wondering how that helps our long term if we aren't investing in our own product the way our big competition (ie City) is.
Knocking Liverpool off that perch was, quite frankly due to the brilliance of one man. The longevity of that success was bolstered by timing allowing us to become an international brand. We don't have that luxury now as kids across the globe can as easily support quite a few teams and be selective. Clubs like Bayern have had blips and dips but never the incompetent levels we have . Nor have they had as astute an ownership group come in and takeover. And absolutely that has as much to do with the PL being so much more marketable as a whole.
It's a confluence of factors . I just think we need to ease up on the feeling that money alone brought City success. All considered, we were financially so well off that we didn't worry - it's that ownerships admirable vision, though we laugh at them, which had got them competeing against us as such after about a lifetime of nothing.
Yes I believe that the ambition city's owners have shown is admirable. They have been desperate for success and have taken very good steps to achieve it. That's where they have beaten PSG.
Again, United can achieve the same but currently I don't think the board is ambitious enough. It will take a few more years for them to realize that on-field success matters and the statements publically made by Woody which are contrary to this will come back to haunt him one day. Until United's finances take a significant hit, I don't see these owners panic.
That's partly the reason why Jose has failed here. Someone who is known to detest mediocrity has been made to work with dross for three seasons now. I am not talking about his signings. Players like Darmian, Rojo, Jones, Young, Valencia should have been shipped ages ago but well..
City, for whatever good they are doing right now, they haven't earned a single bit of it. That's why I won't ever 'respect' them.
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EPL fans? I don't think such a thing exists.
We're not German fans who root for each other to do well in Europe for the betterment of said league. We support our clubs and that's it really.
I can't blame them when Sky etc are constantly out to brainwash the entire world that the EPL is vastly superior to other leagues!
If it could have been any other club, why Man City? The answer is simple, being the rivals of the biggest (in terms of marketability) club in the world has its advantages.
It's how you sell your product. Also it's same with any other leagues, they keep on saying how great their league is, not that they are best but how good their league is or hype something that is good in their league.
If you would scroll through all of City's games this season, I guess you'd find something like 3 or 4 yellows missed perhaps, which must be pretty similar for someone like Spurs (or even United for that matter as they foul a lot). Spurs were already quite good at it too before Pep arrived to the league. So the cynic in me thinks that maybe the results City get have something to do with the way this is being overblown now...
EDIT: Well, that was meant for the 'tactical fouls' topic but hey ho.
EDIT: Well, that was meant for the 'tactical fouls' topic but hey ho.
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No @padr81 you're not disproving my point.
I said relative success, who knows what Arsenal and Spurs could have achieved with 2 of their greatest ever squads if not saddling themselves with stadium construction costs.
Chelsea have been frugile for years now yet have won every competition possible since 2013.
Hell you have spent billions on your club and have won less since your takeover.
Other clubs finishing above us even after out spending them completely backs up my point. Also saying we wouldn't have had the same level of success without Sir Alex slam dunks it home as well.
But no, City needs near 3b worth of investment to compete ffs...
I said relative success, who knows what Arsenal and Spurs could have achieved with 2 of their greatest ever squads if not saddling themselves with stadium construction costs.
Chelsea have been frugile for years now yet have won every competition possible since 2013.
Hell you have spent billions on your club and have won less since your takeover.
Other clubs finishing above us even after out spending them completely backs up my point. Also saying we wouldn't have had the same level of success without Sir Alex slam dunks it home as well.
But no, City needs near 3b worth of investment to compete ffs...
I'll be happy with a draw...
Same as last season tbh, seems best time to play City is within the first 5/6 games.
That Chelsea last minute goal is really getting on my nerves. Had we taken all 3 points there, I'd have snapped your hands off for a draw on Sunday.
I see us conceding at least 3. West Ham scored that many against us so I'm pretty fearful. Our sit back approach isn't one they struggle with if you look at the teams who have had success against them. Under SAF though I expected similar in his last years as on paper I just thought they were just too strong for us. Draw would be great result and keep some momentum.
We defended poorly as usual. i think we won this match because Bournemouth had no time to react.
Even and free. And elite, sure.
I watched Braveheart the other night and I felt a connection between the atrocities committed by former Kings of England and that of the modern-day tyrannical dictatorships currently dominating football. Thus my previous post was born.
Better that than the alternative; charging down the street screaming Freeeeedommmmm to anyone who crosses my path for no apparent reason, only to get locked up shortly after.
I think this game will have a lot less goals than people are expecting. We'll score and so will day. 1-2 to City.
OK. I understand your point. Maybe respect wasn't the best word.
What I meant was that City have done well to recruit the best people at all levels. That includes their Achademy, coaching and playing staff.
They appear to have a structured approach geared to success.
I have ignored their owners for the simple reason that all the top PL clubs have foreign owners; some good and some not so good.