Money Can’t Buy Me Love

With Real Madrid breaking the transfer record not once, but twice, in the football off-season, and Manchester City banding around wage promises that even their United neighbours could only dream of, football fans will look on with great interest over the coming months and years as to whether their free spending can produce the silverware that their expenditure commands. Will this ever be successful? 

Sir Alex Ferguson could only watch in frustration as Karim Benzema was taken from under United’s noses by their Madrid counterparts. The Manchester United manager was left licking his wounds and patiently waiting for a player of better value to come along as, perhaps for the first time ever, United would no longer be the ultimate spending force in Europe. Despite receiving an unbelievable £80 million cheque for the sale of Cristiano Ronaldo, Ferguson has seemingly ended his summer spending at just £20 million, with the signing of Antonio Valencia, Gabriel Obertan and Michael Owen.

Ferguson attributed the sparseness of the United spending this summer to a “lack of value”. In recent years they have been the powerhouse of Europe. But no longer. The deep pockets have moved across the city to Eastlands. Mark Hughes’ spending spree since the end of the season has been quite remarkable already. Carlos Tevez, Emmanuel Adebayor, Gareth Barry and Roque Santa Cruz have set them back a rumoured £80 million. And with no signs of relenting, it remains to be seen whether this free spending approach will work.

There is a precedent to match this to. In 2003 Roman Abramovich took over Chelsea, and with it bought a tidal wave of big spending, as first Claudio Ranieri, then Jose Mourinho spent big on players including Didier Drogba, Andriy Shevchenko and Ricardo Carvalho. Then money turned Chelsea from a very big club, into a huge club who, thus far, have bought home two successive Premier League Trophies, two FA Cups, a League Cup and were within the width of a post of a Champions League title.

Ferguson’s concerns are quite ironic, after all it was Manchester United that propelled prices up at the beginning of the decade. Along with Real Madrid, they paid exorbitant fees for the likes of Zindine Zidane (£45m to Madrid in 2001), Rio Ferdinand (£29m to United in 2002) and Juan Sebastian Veron (£28m to United in 2001). But now with the bottomless pit of money across the city, and the general wealth of Real Madrid, United are finding themselves in a real quandary – because the situation seems unlikely to change in the near future.

United do have one advantage over City: they’re already big. Premier League titles and appearances in the last two Champions League finals are things that money cannot buy – at least not yet anyway. Chelsea’s advantage was that back in 2003, most teams didn’t have big wealthy owners that are present in most clubs nowadays. The Champions League places will be much harder to crack than they were when Chelsea launched their assault six years ago.

And as Arsene Wenger rightly pointed out, throw all the money you want at a side. Ultimately there are only four Champions League spots, and three teams still have to go down (well that’s if Bolton chairman Phil Gartside doesn’t have his way anyway).  Logic dictates that something has to give. At some point the honeymoon period must end, as the Chelsea example shows. As much as Abramovich threw money at Chelsea in buying new players, no owner wants to run a losing ship and if you don’t win - and win big – eventually you have to start being self sufficient. Whether Manchester City’s owners have the mountain of wealth not to be concerned by this remains to be seen.

The whole Manchester City experience reminds me of something that I would do on Championship Manager, and then ultimately end due to a lack of realism. Well this is real – that is for sure. The football fan in me hopes that it doesn’t act as an instant success – the likes of Everton and Arsenal are running a much better show on a much tighter budget and surely deserve it more, but it seems that Manchester City’s vast wealth will produce an up turn in their fortunes in the near future.

By Bob Bamber