If you had been asked where the Etihad Stadium was yesterday would you have had the foggiest idea ? Manchester's second club City have renamed there stadium the Etihad Stadium, following a £400 million ten year deal with Sheikh Mansour. Sheikh Mansour already has a large sponsorship deal with Man City, In total he will have put in over £1 billion. UEFA's new financial fair play regulations will not allow clubs to live beyond there means..............but that does not come into effect until 2013. A Question does anyone know the answer.................... Do we or do we not play the same game as they do ? Our world came tumbling down because of a little (in comparison) debt of £17 million, how many players do they have who are supposed to be worth more than that ? Would I want to be in their shoes............NO........it no longer would be our club, so called fans would appear out of the woodwork shouting their allegience from all over the world (possibly Mars and Saturn as well). A soulless giant of a machine that would fear failure or losing ever to United,where players and managers would come and go as if they are on a conveyor,please save us ever from getting on to that bandwagon. Our way is fraught with pain and anguish.........but it is our way and surely sweeter when success comes. Would you like it that way, or would you prefer it the way that starts from the grass roots upwards ???..........
I read that the deal will be subject to review because the money will count as income when in fact the airline is controlled by the same people who own the football club itself. The question therefore arises whether the payment for the stadium name is genuinely on commercial terms or whether it's a subsidy in disguise. Who wants to bet it will be given the green light? And who on EUFA not having the cajones to take Arab money on? I know what I expect.......
NDG you miss my point - let's hope it goes ahead BECAUSE in ARABIC it means UNITED, oh the irony City's stadium named after UNITED. Mrs R get a grip on this lot please
Look guys I will not tolerate swearing on this forum! Why do you persist with using the word "United" and using caps only makes it worse!!
I think most of us have been saying for quite sometime now that the money in the top division is totally obscene. There is still enough decency left for people like me to say that I would take the hard root everytime over the quick buck and fast track despite my age and wish to see Argyle finally succeed in getting to the top league. How to get there the hard way is the ellusive question though and I wonder if you don't have even a semi rich sugar daddy quite how that is achieved. Very rarely you get a club like Blackpool who make it briefly but generally it does seem to be impossible. Would I be terribly upset if suddenly the Sultan of Brunei rode over the horizon with his cheque book grasped firmly in hand and a pen at the ready. I'd like to say yes to that but I'm not so sure I'd be sufficiently upset along with many others. A family club has to be far preferable to the mega machine type but I doubt many would turn the opportunity down. It's sickening but money has always and always will rule with the would like to be types picking up the crumbs dropped from the table.
Apparently Nicky B, Etihad actually means 'Union' in Arabic. OK it's close to U*i*e* but I'm sure that Man City will have more Union men that the Old Trafford prawn sandwich brigade
Just think what names we could have had for HP from our sponsors in the past. "pasty park" or would be use the tag line of "good honest food" for our previous board to state "good honest folk" ??
