My feelings about our link up with Al Ahly and us reneging on the friendly to raise money for the Port Said disaster are well documented (I know Assem didn’t own Al Ahly, but we had a quasi link with us loaning Gedo and Fathy while also having some pseudo-shared training agreement) so I’m not really a fan of multi club ownership. Clubs like Man City use these links to farm out youngsters and try to advertise it all as mutually beneficial, but aside from maybe getting the odd wonderkid and a small stipend for tolerating it, it only ever really benefits the bigger club. If we have a link up with Maribor, I’d make the argument that they’re probably not that far off us in terms of facilities and stature, plus they regularly qualify for Europe. Given the choice, the EFL will obviously always win, but I’m not sure I’d like us to take players off them to their detriment, seems kinda ****ty. For over a decade, City had an official link up with North Ferriby United and Ferriby never really took full advantage. I once asked Les Hare why they just don’t raid Hull City’s youth academy for loans (they were in the Conference North at the time). His response was to simply point at a picture of Nathan Jarman. “We don’t need them”, he then said. Had to agree, Jarmo was very good, and when you had him and Tom Denton in the side, you didn’t need some random lad from Hull City. Though ironically they did sign Rory Watson on loan from us that season they were in the National League.
