Now THAT’s Excessive–(UPDATED)
By: Thad | July 15th, 2009There are various reports Wednesday night suggesting that the deal for Adebayor is on hold at least temporarily, due to (depending on whom you believe) the player’s worry about what people in Togo will think or wage demands, with at least one report claiming his agent is attempting to goad Manchester United into a bid. It would of course be highly ironic (and I suspect, highly unlikely) if United did get involved after Ferguson’s pious complaints this week about bloated prices in this summer’s transfer market.
Mark Hughes, in response, has pointed out that the “big” clubs have had years and years of superior financial muscle to build up their squads. But there is no doubt that a culture of excess has come to Manchester City. I’m talking not about the transfer spending, but the generous door prizes awaiting City’s players on their arrival in Abu Dhabi to meet Sheikh Mansour, en route to the tour of South Africa.
According to The Sun, the Sheikh presented each player with a Franck Muller watch worth over $275,000 (about the same as Adebayor’s proposed weekly salary) upon their arrival at his palace. (It’s tempting to make a joke here about City’s players no longer having an excuse for being late for the coach, but the truth is a cell phone–or an ugly Casio retro watch like the one below– can tell time as effectively as a Franck Muller.)
The gift watches are a well-intended gesture to be sure, but I’m hoping City’s players might do the Sheikh one better by donating their watches to charity when they return to the UK. The amount of money spent on those watches would be considered a very substantial chunk of change by City’s own community outreach program, to say nothing of many other worthy organizations in Manchester or around the world.
Update: The Daily Mail is reporting that The Sun’s story about the gift watches is false, and that while City’s players did get the royal treatment lavish gifts were not involved. Imagine that, a story in The Sun that turned out to be a little inaccurate!
Further update: The official site is stating that the club is preparing legal action against The Sun over the false story about the watches.
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At first, I was happy at Manchester City’s amount of money and desire to win. I thought “hey, maybe now a team can break the whole ‘big four’ trend and we’ll see some more wins.
I hate to say this, but now you’re team is ridiculous. I feel like they’re playing FIFA Manager with cheats on or something, and it’s just stupid.
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Yea, nothin against you Thad, for this has been your team for a while, but the situation is ridiculous. I rooted for them a season ago after seeing them beat man u., but now its how many billions the team has, no talent involved.
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I played Football Manager 09 with all the money for City for 10 seasons. City own 6 straight titles in that time, though it took till 2011-12 to win the first one. If you have net transfer spending of 80-100 million pounds for several years running guess what you end up with a very strong squad. And City are spending faster than that this summer (though no faster, I don’t think, than what Chelsea did the first two years under Abramovich).
So on the one hand I think it will be entertaining to see what City does and yes the fans deserve a trophy.
But in the long term–or maybe short term–the Premier League needs some reforms. Either a salary cap or a cap on annual net transfer spending (or perhaps a luxury tax on transfers above a certain value). But the point of the reform should not be to preserve the “big 4″ but to make the whole thing more equitable and competitive top to bottom. The main obstacle to any reform for years has been opposition of the biggest clubs. Maybe the almost absurd proportions of what City are trying to do will make some of those clubs change their tune and make a serious conversation about reform possible.In the meantime, I really don’t think the City players need those watches.
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How many STs does Man City need?
Unless Ade is going to be played at CB…Posted from
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I think Ade and Tevez as strikers and everyone else off the bench.
Expensive watches or not, I’d keep mine. How often do you have something that you can point to and say “oh yeah, the sheikh gave me that..”
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There is far too many strikers at the club but the reality is that Robinho will probably play wide with Tevez and Ade up front and Bellamy and Santa Cruz benched as CSD said.
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its offical…adebayor is signed to man city good bye!
http://footballfraternity.wordpress.com/
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