Putting aside the fact that Duncan is a well-known and the most fervent Mourinho's ass licker, this article has some valid points about how City have become so successful off the pitch.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport...chester-citys-financial-figures-dont-13286271
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport...chester-citys-financial-figures-dont-13286271
In many ways Manchester City is the model of a well-managed football club. Across 10 years of ownership Abu Dhabi has deployed extraordinary wealth to recruit the most competent professionals in the game, then entrust that hired expertise to deliver.
Abu Dhabi isn’t particularly passionate about football per se – the titular owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has attended just one home game in that decade. The club was acquired to further the public relations and geopolitical ambitions of the Gulf state. Yet the model works precisely because City’s owners only intervene when necessary.
Unlike a Roman Abramovich, Abu Dhabi doesn’t instruct players on tactics or second guess the manager. Unlike a Glazer family, Abu Dhabi is not driven by the pursuit of profit. On the contrary, the oil-rich monarchy has spent 10 years pumping as much money onto City’s balance sheet as UEFA and Premier League rules allow.
That has returned seven major trophies. The 2011 FA Cup, three League Cups, and a trio of Premier League titles. The latest acquired in a landslide of domestic records – including a century of points, most goals, most victories, 18 consecutive league wins, highest goal difference and points margin over second place.
So impressive was their latest season that UK bookmakers’ installed them as favourites to win this season’s Champions League . Even, if as discussed on this week’s Transfer Window, such odds ignored Pep Guardiola recent questionable record in the competition, they stand as testimony to the image Abu Dhabi’s vast and intelligent investments have constructed for the club.
Last week City published an impressively robust annual report. Turnover for the 2017-18 financial year had been pushed just beyond the symbolic half billion pound mark, returning a small profit of £10.4m, while keeping the reported wage bill below £260m despite a plethora of player acquisitions and contract upgrades.
Those revenues have increased almost sixfold since Abu Dhabi’s first year of ownership and place the club fifth in the world, behind the historic behemoths of Manchester United (£581.2m of revenue in 2016-17), Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich. In some ways, City have already surpassed Europe’s grandest clubs.
City Football Group owns chunks of clubs on four continents. Major League Soccer’s New York City, the J.League’s Yokohama F.Marinos, Australia’s Melbourne City, Uruguay’s Club Atletico Torque and Girona, currently sixth in La Liga. It’s a clever structure which has helped City workaround Financial Fair Play, trading players via sister clubs’ books (Daniel Arzani is an example pertinent to Scotland), or charging them for the sale of “intellectual property”.
Abu Dhabi’s spend on player recruitment has gone far beyond anything ever witnessed before. Recent studies by the CIES Football Observatory report that City have committed €1.47billion to transfer fees since 2010, easily outstripping all others, and some €558m more than famously high spending Madrid.
Forget the strategy of “playing catch up” by buying big in the initial years of ownership, City’s spending on players accelerated around Guardiola’s appointment. In the Catalan’s first two years at the club €586m was committed to transfer fees alone.
When CIES examine the transfer-fee cost of clubs’ current squads, City lead the way on €976m, a spend 24 per-cent higher than second-placed Paris Saint-Germain – another state-owned football club that has come into conflict with European football’s governing body. Barcelona and Madrid’s squads combined cost just €162m more than City’s alone.
The club’s annual report mentions “historical evidence of support provided of more than £1.3billion over the last 10 years” from patent company Abu Dhabi United Group. Yet that figure under-represents the flow of cash into City from the gulf state.
How does a club with a relatively small global support, one that was relegated to England’s third tier as recently as 1998, build the fifth-highest turnover in world football so rapidly? Part of the answer lies in commercial revenues.
City reports turnover from “other commercial activities” of £232.3m last year, 46 percent of all revenue. Only five clubs on the planet have ever returned higher numbers – Bayern Munich, Manchester United, Barca, Madrid and PSG.
City’s numbers are almost a £100m higher than Liverpool’s for 2016/17 and easily outstrip Chelsea (£139.8m) and Arsenal’s (£117.3m). How have City got within striking range of United – a club famed for its ability to mine sponsorship opportunities – and trounced clubs with larger followings?
Four of City’s global partners – Etihad Airways, Etisalat, Visit Abu Dhabi and Aabar – are owned or part-owned by the government of Abu Dhabi. As the emirate is a constitutional monarchy, this means that four of City’s main sponsors are owned by the same family that own the football club. In other words, sponsorship is just another way for Abu Dhabi’s royal family to bankroll the club’s pursuit of sporting dominance.
City’s annual report doesn’t break down the percentage of commercial revenue that hails from Abu Dhabi. In Scottish terms that circa £100m premium of commercial revenue on Liverpool is similar to the entire turnover of Celtic. It’s a lot of excess firepower.
And with it the PR and political powerplay that is Abu Dhabi’s ownership rumbles on. Last week, Sheikh Mansour released a letter to “fellow Manchester City fans”, announcing he was “truly honoured to be one of you”. (So honoured he last attended a match at the stadium his country’s airline lends a name to in November 2009.)
The 47-year-old deputy prime-minister of the UAE, born into a family with a reported wealth in excess of $1trillion, also eulogised the power of sport.“I have always said that football has a much bigger role to play than any normal ‘business’,” his letter read. “I believe that through football we can help empower better lives for people. Not many organisations get to do that directly”.
So that immense investment in Manchester City is about empowering people? Some may consider it a surprise that a man so concerned with empowerment prefers the wealth of his nation to be spent on a football club, rather than on allowing that nation’s people democratic control of it. Others, as is this sport’s way, just won’t care.
Abu Dhabi isn’t particularly passionate about football per se – the titular owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has attended just one home game in that decade. The club was acquired to further the public relations and geopolitical ambitions of the Gulf state. Yet the model works precisely because City’s owners only intervene when necessary.
Unlike a Roman Abramovich, Abu Dhabi doesn’t instruct players on tactics or second guess the manager. Unlike a Glazer family, Abu Dhabi is not driven by the pursuit of profit. On the contrary, the oil-rich monarchy has spent 10 years pumping as much money onto City’s balance sheet as UEFA and Premier League rules allow.
That has returned seven major trophies. The 2011 FA Cup, three League Cups, and a trio of Premier League titles. The latest acquired in a landslide of domestic records – including a century of points, most goals, most victories, 18 consecutive league wins, highest goal difference and points margin over second place.
So impressive was their latest season that UK bookmakers’ installed them as favourites to win this season’s Champions League . Even, if as discussed on this week’s Transfer Window, such odds ignored Pep Guardiola recent questionable record in the competition, they stand as testimony to the image Abu Dhabi’s vast and intelligent investments have constructed for the club.
Last week City published an impressively robust annual report. Turnover for the 2017-18 financial year had been pushed just beyond the symbolic half billion pound mark, returning a small profit of £10.4m, while keeping the reported wage bill below £260m despite a plethora of player acquisitions and contract upgrades.
Those revenues have increased almost sixfold since Abu Dhabi’s first year of ownership and place the club fifth in the world, behind the historic behemoths of Manchester United (£581.2m of revenue in 2016-17), Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich. In some ways, City have already surpassed Europe’s grandest clubs.
City Football Group owns chunks of clubs on four continents. Major League Soccer’s New York City, the J.League’s Yokohama F.Marinos, Australia’s Melbourne City, Uruguay’s Club Atletico Torque and Girona, currently sixth in La Liga. It’s a clever structure which has helped City workaround Financial Fair Play, trading players via sister clubs’ books (Daniel Arzani is an example pertinent to Scotland), or charging them for the sale of “intellectual property”.
Abu Dhabi’s spend on player recruitment has gone far beyond anything ever witnessed before. Recent studies by the CIES Football Observatory report that City have committed €1.47billion to transfer fees since 2010, easily outstripping all others, and some €558m more than famously high spending Madrid.
Forget the strategy of “playing catch up” by buying big in the initial years of ownership, City’s spending on players accelerated around Guardiola’s appointment. In the Catalan’s first two years at the club €586m was committed to transfer fees alone.
When CIES examine the transfer-fee cost of clubs’ current squads, City lead the way on €976m, a spend 24 per-cent higher than second-placed Paris Saint-Germain – another state-owned football club that has come into conflict with European football’s governing body. Barcelona and Madrid’s squads combined cost just €162m more than City’s alone.
The club’s annual report mentions “historical evidence of support provided of more than £1.3billion over the last 10 years” from patent company Abu Dhabi United Group. Yet that figure under-represents the flow of cash into City from the gulf state.
How does a club with a relatively small global support, one that was relegated to England’s third tier as recently as 1998, build the fifth-highest turnover in world football so rapidly? Part of the answer lies in commercial revenues.
City reports turnover from “other commercial activities” of £232.3m last year, 46 percent of all revenue. Only five clubs on the planet have ever returned higher numbers – Bayern Munich, Manchester United, Barca, Madrid and PSG.
City’s numbers are almost a £100m higher than Liverpool’s for 2016/17 and easily outstrip Chelsea (£139.8m) and Arsenal’s (£117.3m). How have City got within striking range of United – a club famed for its ability to mine sponsorship opportunities – and trounced clubs with larger followings?
Four of City’s global partners – Etihad Airways, Etisalat, Visit Abu Dhabi and Aabar – are owned or part-owned by the government of Abu Dhabi. As the emirate is a constitutional monarchy, this means that four of City’s main sponsors are owned by the same family that own the football club. In other words, sponsorship is just another way for Abu Dhabi’s royal family to bankroll the club’s pursuit of sporting dominance.
City’s annual report doesn’t break down the percentage of commercial revenue that hails from Abu Dhabi. In Scottish terms that circa £100m premium of commercial revenue on Liverpool is similar to the entire turnover of Celtic. It’s a lot of excess firepower.
And with it the PR and political powerplay that is Abu Dhabi’s ownership rumbles on. Last week, Sheikh Mansour released a letter to “fellow Manchester City fans”, announcing he was “truly honoured to be one of you”. (So honoured he last attended a match at the stadium his country’s airline lends a name to in November 2009.)
The 47-year-old deputy prime-minister of the UAE, born into a family with a reported wealth in excess of $1trillion, also eulogised the power of sport.“I have always said that football has a much bigger role to play than any normal ‘business’,” his letter read. “I believe that through football we can help empower better lives for people. Not many organisations get to do that directly”.
So that immense investment in Manchester City is about empowering people? Some may consider it a surprise that a man so concerned with empowerment prefers the wealth of his nation to be spent on a football club, rather than on allowing that nation’s people democratic control of it. Others, as is this sport’s way, just won’t care.
