no you are if you think that you will never live in united's shadow..................

Do the City fans crowing about signing Tevez not feel a slight sense of anti-climax about the whole thing?

Lets face it, football is dead as a sport. It's now an entertainment media platform much like the massive American sports. It's 100% about money and the next revolution IMO is franchising.

If City reach the Champions League next season have they achieved anything? If they win the league is there really any need to congratulate Hughes or whoever their manager is after they spent £999 gazillion on players?

The thing about signing Tevez, Adebayor, Robinho, Santa Cruz and co is that they can't play every week or they'd lose every week due to an embarassing lack of balance. So that means their statements about wanting to push themselves and play every week are ridiculous. Santa Cruz in particular is going to be playing Coca Cola Cup games and every fourteenth Saturday.

It just amuses me about City, their billionaire is not the astute man Abramovich is for Chelsea. You get this picture of this Arab sat with the Football Manager 2009 database on his screen and youtube on the other, finding a well-known and horrifically overpriced player and then dialling the phone and telling the club to bid for them. I don't think Hughes has any involvement in these fantasy deals at all.

I think the European football authorities need to get a grip of things before they get even more farcical. Salary caps linked to turnover are surely needed as there are now so many clubs solely reliant on individuals to survive. If those individuals are naughty and have their assets frozen or lose out in business climate changes, there is a risk clubs will go out of business. They have also got to sort out the Champions league circle where the teams that qualify for that are guaranteed such increased levels of income that it becomes almost impossible for them to fail to reach the CL. They are creating the much talked about European Super League by default as they are allowing several clubs to swell to truly epic proportions whilst allowing the rest to languish in eternal mediocrity, unless bought by a rich boy looking for a status symbol.

If he hadn't managed to get lucky with the appointment of Jose Mourinho I don't think you'd be calling him astute. You'd be laughing at how much money he'd wasted with no silverware to show for it.

If Abramovich was astute he would have been chaining Jose Mourinho to Stamford Bridge and never letting him leave. He wouldn't have been chasing after SGE. He wouldn't have appointed Avram Grant full time. Avram Grant wouldn't have been at Stamford Bridge in the first place.

They've just managed to sign a player from Man United, a player who the Man Utd supporters loved and wanted to keep. There's a prospect of them buying more top players and in future competing with the biggest names in the game.

But maybe they'd enjoy it more if they were getting relegated again?





Bull5hit. If football is dead to you, then **** off and leave the sport completely. But to millions of supporters around the world football is as real as it's ever been.

Yeah, football has been tarnished a lot by the ridiculous sums involved in the game, but that part of the game is pretty easy to ignore when the players are on the pitch and the whistle is blown.



I don't think Citeh will reach the CL with the squad they have, so yes, they will have achieved something if they qualify for the CL.



Of course not every player can play every week, but that doesn't mean that each individual player doesn't want to play every week. You want your players to want to play.



And if that's true, and citeh end up spending 300m to stay in exactly the same place, the rest of Europe can have a laugh at them.

If they achieve success then the constant top 4 will be broken by a fresh team.



But when the Italian clubs were signing world stars like Maradona, Gullit, van Basten, Platini it was okay to spend big? When Madrid were buying Zidane that was okay? Madrid breaking the world record again to buy Ronaldo is okay?



So the biggest, richest clubs not only have the advantage of wealth, they are the only ones allowed to spend big. That really helps football as a competitive game, doesn't it?





There's always that risk. Even for clubs like Madrid. There's only so many training ground deals that can be done.

Clubs who take the risk deserve to go under if they fail. It's a risk most fans want to see.



See, even a broken clock is right twice a day.



Which you want to outlaw anyway.

If Santa Cruz gets fit and Adebayor signs, I wonder how long it'll be before Tevez is moaning to the press about his lack of starts.

There again Kia Joowhatshisname will flash a check of £150k in front of him and remind him to keep quiet.

I wouldn't come out and say I love my company, my customers etc, then fook off to their nearest and big rivals.

You wasent moaning at Rooney was you ?

Last time I checked Rooney moved to a club to improve his career and move to a club where he had the chance of winning things, moreover he didn't move to Liverpool.

Tevez moving to City is like Kuyt moving to Everton.

If he'd gone to Real Madrid, Barca or Inter for the money it wouldn't have bothered most United fans, but the fact that he sold his ar$e to City is what has pi$$ed me and most others off.

You wouldn't, when attempting to negotiate a new deal, tell your boss that you loved working for the company, loved the job, wanted to progress in the organisation etc?

I think Tevez' only real loyalty is to the Dark Lord, Sauron.

If Owen stays fit he could well end up being a better option up front than Tevez anyway. We have players that like to drop into the hole like Berba and Rooney, we need someone to play off the last defender and potentially Owen could offer us better balance.

That said our squad still looks weak to me and I fancy us to finish 3rd as things stand currently.

It's a terrible business. I'm sure if you asked any City supporter they'd be saying the same. Why on earth would we consider ourselves to have achieved anything if we reached the Champions League, or Heaven forbid, won something?

I've enjoyed the last 33 years of relegation battles, the odd foray into the mid-table upper reaches and the occasional Quarter Final, so why would any of us be happy with a change to that? I know I was happier when we failed to score a single home goal from New Year's Day till the end of the season under Stuart Pearce.

I can't believe that anyone would actually need more than two strikers, more than eleven players. It's ruining the game by meaning that such quality youngsters such as Ched Evans can't even make the bench. Whatever happened to the days when teams brought through young players? Can we ever remember City bringing through a young player? We must be the worst in the country for the lack of talent coming through the Academy.

I just feel sorry for the Big Four. All those years of toiling and grafting, building their teams up on such limited budgets only to see some outsider try and challenge the status quo. You've got to feel for them. It's not fair and it's not British.

citeh's team for next season

given
dunne
10 strikers

Playing with 12 men are they?

As a slight aside: anyone remember Jack Walker?

If they could get away with it they would

Yes. Landlord of the Rovers Return in Coronation Street in the early days. Married to Annie Walker. Why do you ask?

if they can buy it they will

downing going to villa for £12million.....................

Madrid really have inflated the market

citeh offered £45 million but he turned them down

I was rather thinking of the late chairman of Blackburn Rovers.

Ashley Young on the move?

We have signed two strikers at present; maybe three by the time you read this. We had no strikers of any note last year who are anything above lower Premier League level; no proven goalscorer and no target man. Without signing three strikers, we could not hope to compete at the level we are aiming at

There is still six weeks left in the window to get us the commanding central defender we need, although that is not as desperate a need as others may think. In my opinion, Onuoha and Kompany are good enough for where we want to be and I think that is the latter's best position. Richards and Bridge are England international full backs and that still leaves Dunne and Zabaleta. I do agree we need one commanding centre back but we are trying, not even you could have missed that, and we have plenty of time yet.

As for midfield, well that was a major part of why the defensive record was so bad for me. Despite having an abundance of holding midfielders last year, we lacked the driving force and the leader who could get us playing further up the field, away from home. On our travels we were too soft in the centre and the weight of the opponent's pressure was costing the goals rather than through lack of decent defenders (notwithstanding Dunne's mad spells).

To an outsider, who simply saw City score lots of goals and concede not so many less, they thought the lack of decent defenders was the problem. Anyone who saw anything of us, anyone knows anything about it, knew that our problems stemmed from not having a striker, or set of strikers, who could keep the ball up their end of the field and a midfield that didn't have the strength to do likewise. The defenders were asked to do much more work than they should have done and even the best of them would have struggled in that team.

I have been very impressed about the way that Mark Hughes is going about this. Even if those who never watch City don't agree, those of us that do know that he is signing just the right type of player in just the right areas and I now trust that he will start to target the other areas as appropriate.

Hughes has already said he doesnt believe in having too big a squad, where senior pros have to train with the reserves. He also said that he wouldnt look to offload players until after he's completed his recruitment. Hence I expect an exodus from City at the beginning of August.

I think City's squad will end up looking something like:

Given, Taylor, Zabaleta, Richards, Terry or Toure, Lescott, Kompany, Onuha, Bridge, Garrido, Ireland, De Jong, Barry, Elano, Johnson, Wright Phillips, Petrov, Tevez, Santa Cruz, Bellamy, Adabayor, Robinho.

I think Hughes would like to eventually replace Garrido, Elano & Petrov but only if he can bring in like for like replacements and may leave that until January. And Bojinov might be retained if he has a good pre season.

Overall I think that's a strong squad. It may be capable of challenging for 4th place but 5th would be more realitic given the difficulties of getting so many new players to gel. And there will inevitably be a few tantrums when the teamsheets go up. But we should be serious contenders for the cups