Are City the only club to have received ‘controversial’ finance?

I find some responses on here disappointing. It can be summed up 'as the world is a bad place, we have bad people running our club but so does everyone else. So what!'
I have worked at a senior level, directly for a Royal Family in the middle east and taken the Royal Penny and had an excellent living in that time. I hope SWP can back me up on some of this. Many of the Royals have had an expensive private education in Britain or America, there are strong liberlising elements within them as a result. They, however have to introduce change in an incremental fashion and their ability to do so fluctuates with the national and international climate (Trump is playing into the hands of those that want to resist change and even radicalise). The religious factions are fighting for control and carry a lot of weight. It all adds upto a careful balancing act. The fact that City is a leading light in community projects, womens football and embraces LGBT camaigns is no coincidence. It raise uncomfortable questions in the Arab states, ones which our owners seem happy to have raised in their club. I do care about equalities and would not want to live or visit most middle east countries if i were gay or trans. Football, however is equally backward in these aspects. No opennly gay footballers. What does that say about the culture in ALL football clubs. The treatment of political disadents is equally an issue. Hope no one has been on holiday in Spain recently, or Turkey or Amerca etc... That is a real issue we cannot avoid about our owners but as others have pointed out we live in a global economy and all consume gas, oil, petrol from similar places. So, when asked if we have dirty money, ask the others if they believe sport is a power for good, change and breaking down barriers? I believe it can be.
Just seen this post. Fantastic.

One of the points I made in a KOTK piece I did was that it took us from Magna Carta in 1215, via the 1689 Bill of Rights, to the 1928 Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act to establish the supremacy of an elected body and for everyone to get the vote. That's over 700 years yet people expect places like the UAE to change overnight.

Plus, as you say, there are religious and cultural norms in the Middle East that we can't overlook and will take a very long time to change, if they ever do.
 
It was last year Marvin. Like it or not the likes of the rags and Liverpool still attract far more attention than we do.
Guardian Match Reports
Wolves v City: 929 comments. Utd v Spurs: 3,078.

That's 1:3. But that's not typical because Utd played Spurs - a popular club, and it was the only game on a Monday night. Typically using the comments as a metric it's about 2 City to 3 Utd.

In summary, I agree they attract more interest, but it's changing rapidly and nowhere near the extent to which Stu Brennan suggested to you. That perhaps was the case 5 years or so ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/aug/25/wolves-manchester-city-premier-league-match-report

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...tottenham-hotspur-premier-league-match-report
 
Guardian Match Reports
Wolves v City: 929 comments. Utd v Spurs: 3,078.

That's 1:3. But that's not typical because Utd played Spurs - a popular club, and it was the only game on a Monday night. Typically using the comments as a metric it's about 2 City to 3 Utd.

In summary, I agree they attract more interest, but it's changing rapidly and nowhere near the extent to which Stu Brennan suggested to you. That perhaps was the case 5 years or so ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/aug/25/wolves-manchester-city-premier-league-match-report

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...tottenham-hotspur-premier-league-match-report
You can't look at a small subset of the population & claim a definitive trend. Stuart and me had this discussion last year & Ric also was involved in confirming what Stuart told me iirc. I agree things are changing, particularly in the USA but I have to assume that a large national & regional newspaper group like Trinity Mirror knows its audiences.
 
Guardian Match Reports
Wolves v City: 929 comments. Utd v Spurs: 3,078.

That's 1:3. But that's not typical because Utd played Spurs - a popular club, and it was the only game on a Monday night. Typically using the comments as a metric it's about 2 City to 3 Utd.

In summary, I agree they attract more interest, but it's changing rapidly and nowhere near the extent to which Stu Brennan suggested to you. That perhaps was the case 5 years or so ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/aug/25/wolves-manchester-city-premier-league-match-report

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...tottenham-hotspur-premier-league-match-report

I guess it depends on where you're looking Marvin. The red tops still try to shoehorn Liverpool or U****d in to every headline possible, for example


'Liverpool are third with Manchester United FIFTH as new Premier League top 10 for IGTV is revealed'

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/liverpool-third-manchester-united-fifth-13156104
 
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You can't look at a small subset of the population & claim a definitive trend. Stuart and me had this discussion last year & Ric also was involved in confirming what Stuart told me iirc. I agree things are changing, particularly in the USA but I have to assume that a large national & regional newspaper group like Trinity Mirror knows its audiences.
I believe habits and data have changed dramatically.

I just googled Manchester City v Newcastle United Guardian Match reports and found this from 2010.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2010/oct/03/manchester-city-newcastle-united-premier-league

132 comments. I guarantee that the City v Newcastle game on Saturday will get 5 times the number of comments (even though it's the last game on the Saturday).

This is not entirely scientific but it's a good guide. Too make it more accurate I would have to look at a United match report from the same season and see how it compared, but I am fairly sure in my own mind that interest in City online has surged in last few years so that whilst Utd are still the no. 1 supported club the gap is coming down dramatically. I remember seeing some data from a Digital Trends Survey of social media drawn from across the globe which supports that interpretation. The three most popular English clubs were United, Liverpool and City with City particularly popular in China.
 
When you think about it, pretty much everything, everyone does in Britain is morally questionable.

You get up and make breakfast using battery farmed eggs. Drive to work in a car which runs on petrol (funding the middle east) and is built using metal that's bought at significantly reduced rates from poor African countries. The clothes you're wearing have been made by an 8 year old child in India. The electricity keeping the lights on is coal fueled, polluting our atmosphere. We all use gambling apps, these companies manipulate addiction and ruin lives. We throw out gone-off food when there are families a few miles away queuing up at the food bank. We all use social media that's damaging mental health in young people and leading to more suicides then ever before. People are still sexist, racist, homophobic. We eat fast food which is bad for ourselves. We take drugs and drink alcohol. We go on nice holidays or take a gap year when there are children in Africa who're starving to death.

But yeah, HHSM must be especially bad for your whiter than white, stone throwing, glass house smashing football fan who was probably stood on the Kop throwing bananas at black players in the 1980's (before oil money ruined football).
 
I believe habits and data have changed dramatically.

I just googled Manchester City v Newcastle United Guardian Match reports and found this from 2010.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2010/oct/03/manchester-city-newcastle-united-premier-league

132 comments. I guarantee that the City v Newcastle game on Saturday will get 5 times the number of comments (even though it's the last game on the Saturday).

This is not entirely scientific but it's a good guide. Too make it more accurate I would have to look at a United match report from the same season and see how it compared, but I am fairly sure in my own mind that interest in City online has surged in last few years so that whilst Utd are still the no. 1 supported club the gap is coming down dramatically. I remember seeing some data from a Digital Trends Survey of social media drawn from across the globe which supports that interpretation. The three most popular English clubs were United, Liverpool and City with City particularly popular in China.
Things are certainly moving in the right direction so you have a point. As an example, I've just googled "Manchester United" and got about 175m search results. I did the same using "Manchester City" and got 80m results. That latter number would probably have been a lot less a few years ago. SEO's measure these things much more scientifically and the story is that they are still significantly more popular than us but that might not be quite so true in 5 or 10 years.
 
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How many times have we heard the argument that Man City are an oil-club? The argument pre-supposes that City are owned by the U.A.E when in fact the owner is Sheikh Mansour and China Media Capital but taking the argument on its own terms I thought I would check.

Oil and gas represents 16.7% of UAE GDP as at 2016. Source: http://www.economy.ae/EconomicalReportsEn/MOE Annual Report 2017_English.pdf

Both the US and Russia each produce around 3 times as much oil as the UAE. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_production
 
i think the 'oil' comments are a little misguided to the current situation in UAE, which has a diversified market (with a healthy share of oil/gas production), but the enormous growth of the the Al Nahyan family's wealth throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s was indeed largely down to oil production, and a lot of that wealth still exists today through investment.
 

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