Yeah, it has begun, it hasn't happened though. Say the power balance in Manchester was like 99% Man Utd - 1% City before the Oil money, its more 60% Man Utd - 40% City now. What say you, JJS?
What are you basing this on? They are able to compete with you in terms of player recruitment (and beat you in some cases), their squad is about as strong as yours and they knocked you out of the FA cup semi final. They are quite close to you these days.
So would you say that when we won the FA Cup and you won the league in 1990, that United and Liverpool were pretty close? No, we were nowhere near you.
They were on the same amount of points, but anyway, 3rd is miles away from bottom half of the table, which is where Man Yernited were at that time.
But we had Fergie, a worldwide fan-base and not a great deal of competition when we first got going (the likes of Leeds, Aston Villa and Norwich). They've got Mancini who isn't and never will be in the same league as SAF, they're still largely unknown around the world and their competition (us, Chelsea, Arsenal and your lot) is a lot stiffer. Just out of interest, why bother typing "Yernited"? It's an extra couple of letters to type.
Fergie was hardly world class at the time. Man Utd (better?) fans had banners demanding he be sacked in that very season, Mancini is even more qualified than Ferguson was when he took over Man Utd. I like to add a bit of variety to my posts, keep you on your toes, so I thought Yernited was a nice addition.
I don't think Mancini was better qualified than Fergie. His trophies with Inter were basically won by default after the other big teams were crushed by the corruption scandal. Fergie broke up the Old Firm and won a European trophy on a shoestring budget at unfashionable Aberdeen. Mancini has spent big bucks wherever he's been and still won nothing of any real value.
Never have two words in the English language been so suitably paired. To be fair SAF did nothing special at St Mirren (although the reasons for his sacking are laughable - something to do with getting young players bursaries or something)
Pretty harsh that, he won Coppa Italia's at Fiorentina and Lazio which is a pretty major trophy in Italy. That was when you Serie A was incredibly strong and even had 2 Italian CL finalists at one point, so to win two cups with relatively unfancied teams isn't all that bad. He does have glaring weaknesses but he has plenty of time to sort that out, Fergie didn't sort Man Utd out for about 5-6 years, he was always learning on the job, just like Mancini should do if he approaches things with an open mind and isn't stubborn a la Wenger, Benitez and Houllier. And even if he wasn't, Fergie was only good in hindsight for Man Utd at the time, most living in that present time wanted him out or thought he wasn't competent enough to do the job.
So far they have sure, things change like when you were light years behind Liverpool 18. Things come in era's it will soon be someone else's time.
