Manchester City owner Thaksin Shinawatra doesn’t have much footballing experience although he has the cash (and has truck loads of them). But no dearth of experience for the club’s manager Sven-Goran Eriksson.
The Swede says that to reach to the next level and compete with the top four in the English Premier League and challenge for the league title season after season, Man City would have to spend Chel$ki-style and Shinawatra has to start pouring the money into the blue half of Manchester just as a certain Roman Abramovich trickled money from his oil barrels into Chelsea.
Eriksson says:
Beating United in a single match, of course, is positive but beating them over the course of a season or on an international level, given their fame, will be really difficult.
That’s why United are where they are and why we are where we are. There’s a massive way to go but I’m happy that he talks that way and, if he wants, let’s give it a go. It’s a realistic target if the resources are there.
Remember Chelsea were a good team but only started to compete with United and Arsenal when Abramovich came in.
That was a huge scale of investment but Thaksin doesn’t say that this season we should be competing with United and the others — he’s talking about the future. He wants to put the money there. I’m happy that he’s saying it because it means he has these ambitions.
So according to Eriksson, money directly translates into success, which makes sense. The days when fans got up in arms about losing the ‘soul’ of their club following a billionaire-takeover are long gone, so maybe City fans are just as happy to see them spend their way to the top.