City are purchased by Abu Dhabi in September 2008. Manchester City placed 9th the season prior. Abu Dhabi get to work buying players who wouldn't otherwise even look in City's direction. 9th place in 2007/'08 becomes 8th place in 2008/'09; the initial steps of the process take a while to bed in, as the old is replaced with the new. City's first big leap takes place the next season with 8th place bested by three positions. They finish the 2009/'10 season in 5th position. We're now in 2010/'11 and City have sacked Hughes and got their first big name coach in Roberto Mancini. They finish 3rd that season and are now a Champions League club. They've been a perennial fixture in the CL places ever since.
There are no cyclic ups or downs, no consequence for poor purchases where normal clubs are lumped with players whose value plummets who they then cannot get off their books because they cannot afford to pay up their contracts willy-nilly and no other club will take them on without subsidy. There is no fear or regard for any of the recognised norms clubs who are not state-owned are hamstrung by. City are a guaranteed lock for a CL place, thus taking it away from any legitimate contender who is then vying with the remainder for 'a go'. The established Old Order are hurt by this, but the remainder are absolutely crushed by it because they have to have more luck than ever before, or take on more financial risk than ever before to try and break this new status quo.
Meanwhile, of the Old Order, not one of them has been a lock in the CL positions as a perennial fixture since 2009/'10
Manchester United have missed out on the CL 5, going on 6 times (once this season concludes).
Liverpool have missed out on the CL 6 times.
Chelsea have missed out on the CL 4, going on 5 times (once this season concludes).
Arsenal have missed out on the CL 6 times.
This is the Old Order, look how many times these so-called behemoths have failed to qualify for the Champions League since City became an indubitable fixture in the competition. Whether you wish to count Chelsea or not, the point remains - Chelsea are more an example of a club with no hope forcing themselves into the conversation, but not overstepping the mark to the point they have broken football.
Now, as stated by numerous people and their painstaking efforts to make clear how damaging what City are doing is, it's not the clubs above who are the most put out by City, it's the teams below them who, without City's permanency would have had a chance to make their play for the top table. Spurs are going to have been the biggest fall guys, but now it's also the likes of Villa as they try and push through the glass ceiling to compete directly with the teams above (and not City).
There is no time in English football history where Old Orders (they used to be dynamic: Wolves, for example, used to be a big dog up to the conclusion of the 1950's) as there have been - or supposedly established - where those teams remained, perennially, at the helm. In fact, most are defined by golden periods followed by fallow times where they cannot compete for the league nor CL (or previously, the European Cup).
Great periods for these sides are attributed to great men doing unbelievably shrewd work within a financial remit that whilst at the higher end, was not obliterating those around them - the clubs ebbed and flowed with the passage of these managers. City are a faceless state, as
@Regulus Arcturus Black stated, there is no way for them to fail because they will always have the best in class, will always replace the best with the best and there will never be a lull due to financial instability or uncertainty. In other words, completely and utterly artificial conditions, especially when contrasted with what history has told us about every one of the Old Order, who all, to a club, could/did/have slumped and have had to re-establish themselves once more years down the line.
It's clear that what some see as "Manchester United" is actually an infernal loathing of Alex Ferguson and the brilliance he ushered into the club, which immediately lost its way without him at the top. In the following 10 years, the cluelessness, and more importantly, the consequences of that cluelessness, have not only seen Manchester United fall back into the pack, but for most of the time, be behind them by some distance. The exact same thing befell Liverpool when Dalglish handed over to Souness and sent them flailing, not only off the top spot, but to be out of the running for the title for years. In very short order, both clubs went from halcyon periods with great players to an exodus and squads and managers who hadn't a prayer. This is how the Old Order works and what their pitfalls are. One or two bad managerial hires and they can fall like a house of cards because consequence for poor decisions then comes back to haunt them as a debt that needs paying in full. These old clubs don't just get to wipe the slate clean each season and go again with a brand new set of players if the bad buys don't work out. They are lumped with them and the general bar for the side will steadily diminish. Arsenal experienced exactly the same thing once Wenger stopped shitting gold. The stadium didn't help, but it wasn't their downfall, but it highlights another point and consequence: the either, or. By pouring money into the new stadium, they were going to be hamstrung for years. A conscious decision made to better their stadium meant less money could be pumped into the team, and anyone coming to manage them had to accept that. At City? Nope, we'll redevelop a portion of the
city - yes, the literal city - whilst still hiring best in class across all facets on off and the pitch with no fallout whatsoever. Hmm... clearly the same playing field as what everyone else is uuming and ahhing from.
The worst thing of all is City didn't have to cheat as a state is going to be Borg-like in its assimilation by its very nature. It cannot be anything else, which is why it has no place in football, but that's besides the point as this is about cheating to achieve ends as hurriedly and as artificially as one can imagine.
As much as the Old Order could be despised by those who were not part of it, they were not infinite or unmovable. Every single one of them had sizeable lulls multiple times in their histories and provided opportunities for others to take their slice of the pie should they be so fortunate to go upwind at the time of a boon for the game. We'll never know what would have happened without City in the picture, but history tells us, quite clearly, that even the biggest of English clubs has never been too big to not fail, until now. With Ferguson's retirement, there was no guarantee status quo would have remained, but unlike in the past, where new players could gobble up space, things quickly became established in this new, most broken order where the winningest team's biggest concerns are in how to hide their wrongdoing. The footballing side of things, a total formality due to them having no consequences for anything that goes wrong.
