We can never be the behemoth without that acceptance. It's why Chelsea have still fell behind in a business and footballing sense over a decade after their takeover.
Our business model depends on our ability to attract new fans and give them something to emotionally hang their hat on in terms of "who Man City are", in the way that United, Arsenal and Liverpool have but Chelsea don't.
United fans rightly or wrongly could describe in great detail who United are as a club and if you got 100 fans to do this then 75% of them would be "on message" regarding Munich/the Busby Babes to the European Cup comeback, Alex Ferguson and Fergies Fledglings, constant youth development, the Stretford End and Best, Charlton and Law, etc. Arsenal fans would talk about Chapman's revolutions and then Wenger's revolutions on how he singlehandedly modernised the English game, how Arsenal play the best football and are single-minded in how they go about their business. Liverpool will talk about Shankly, the boot-room, Istanbul, Gerrard and Carragher and Owen and the rest of them.
My point is that each of these clubs have a mythos behind them that ties into their brand identity. Of course much of it is complete bollocks but that isn't important to the Beijing Massive who will watch Sky TV and listen to how these are "great clubs, different from any other". This obviously drives their revenue - not only because fans feel that certain traits that the club holds but also that advertisers will see that people associate these clubs with that trait and will want to cross-market themselves with them.
Chelsea have consistently struggled for revenue because they don't have this. They have the stink of new money, the image of oil baron running things, a suspect Russian in charge, no standardised way of playing football and a bunch of racist fans.
Again, this is obviously bollocks that doesn't take into account the great things that they have done but my point is that their brand image out in the wider world is not a positive one.
Our image is less vitriolic than Chelseas, and people tend to hate us less because of the local investments made and the fact that we don't really have many dislikeable players in our team. We do have the new money problem and we do have the oil baron problem and the FFP sanctions were extremely bad for us image wise, but outside of that we're doing better than Chelsea were in trying to pull back the stink of investment. With NYCFC and Melbourne we are creating new fans of the brand in the longer term - many of the NYCFC lot absolutely hate us now but these are the first responders/glory-hunting tossers who will be weeded out in the long run and their fanbase will become more sensible over time to see the shared relationship.
You talk of success and the need for it but I'd argue that in the modern global game, success alone isn't enough to build your business on top of and use not only Chelsea but many of the Italian clubs and the differences between Wolfsburg/Dortmund in Germany. We don't compete REALLY with the Evertons of the world in terms of building new sponsor relations and gaining a fanbase; we compete with Barca, Bayern, Real, United, Liverpool, Milan, Juve, Arsenal and Chelsea. They all have success as well so we're no different in that regard - what we're trying to do here is to create a "Man City Way".
To be honest, the Man City Way is basically what was always Typical City. But since the Swales Era the "brand" of our club has always been one of spectacular fuck ups with the opposite that people also claim to be part of the charm not being common enough. That's who we are to many outsiders and it's who we are to many City fans. We were essentially the bumbling but loveable sidekick of English football.
That isn't however who Abu Dhabi wants us to be. They as you point out want us to be liked and respected, rather than liked and patronised or respected but feared. They understand that this will help them achieve the goals that they have when buying the club and it will help us grow as a brand in the new battlegrounds of European football - the US, Africa and India. They want City to have a positive attitude in the minds of other people and unfortunately some sacrifices do need to be made around this idea, like not going and telling UEFA to fuck themselves and spending £500m.
We can talk on and on and on about the relative merits and faults with these ideas, but it's essentially fruitless as we'll conduct our business like that no matter what. We're not City's target audience any more, they already have us hooked. They are now arsed about the Chinese teenager shopping in their local sports shop and to get them to buy City's shirt, so that we have the revenues to compete with the biggest clubs in the world. Distasteful or not, it is the commercial realities of football in a UEFA driven world.
