If the takeover didn't happen in 2008?

[theres only one carlito]

I don’t think it’s the fact we were taken over in 2008 necessarily. It’s the people that took over that is the biggest difference. We could have been taken over by anyone, the fact it was Sheik mansoor and his dedication and delivery is where the difference lies.

 

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

I don’t think it’s the fact we were taken over in 2008 necessarily. It’s the people that took over that is the biggest difference. We could have been taken over by anyone, the fact it was Sheik mansoor and his dedication and delivery is where the difference lies.

Ah but there, with respect, I think you're answering a question that hasn't been asked. Would we be where we are now without that particular takeover ? Almost certainly not. But with no takeover whatsoever, would we have gone into receivership and then gone out of existence as a club? I don't believe so, not for one second.
Then, between those two extremes, you've got all kinds of takeovers that might have brought modest success. Or not.

 

[theres only one carlito]

Ah but there, with respect, I think you're answering a question that hasn't been asked. Would we be where we are now without that particular takeover ? Almost certainly not. But with no takeover whatsoever, would we have gone into receivership and then gone out of existence as a club? I don't believe so, not for one second.
Then, between those two extremes, you've got all kinds of takeovers that might have brought modest success. Or not.

I’m at a loss to think what would of been had we not changed ownership in 2008, I shudder to think, but from reading and listening to people like Gary James I don’t think we would of been in a very good position at all. Not that it would have mattered to us fans, we’ve been in the proverbial before and it wasn’t so bad. But it was nowhere near as good as this. People call us lottery winners, that’s exactly how I think it is. We’d be council estate banter, now we’re penthouse playboys! And girls ;-)

 

[Brad mcfc]

We would still beat United home and away :)

 

[Bozo]

We would still be dicking the Rags.

 

[Johnny Mars Bar]

We’d probably be a bit a West Ham or an Everton.

The occasional good year, maybe fluked a league cup or something, qualified for Europe one year and almost getting relegated the next.

We’d be a mid table prem team basically.

 

[bluemurray]

As I understand it, immediately prior to the takeover we were in a deeply serious financial position, using advanced TV payments to purchase players on the dangerous assumption that we would stay up, thus continue to receive the TV money and so pay off the transfer fees accrued... Whatever the truth, we were up the creek without a paddle, so to speak, and I think there is every chance the we would have gone bust at some point in the near future. Amazes me sometimes how, in life, the dice rolls...

 

[Deleted member 77198]

Here's my stone cold sober assessment, for what it's worth:

We'd have been a mid-table team, most of the time in the Premier League, with occasional excursions to the Championship. With or without the takeover, we're too big to be out of the top flight for long. We always have been. But I don't think we would have been competing for top four, somehow.
The whole financial structure of football has changed radically since the foundation of the Premier League and the advent of worldwide satellite football and the beaming of the PL to every major country on earth and a good few minor ones.
And that's not us, it's the way the cartel clubs wanted it (and everybody else went along with it, because, well, what are you going to do?) — Arsenal, United, Liverpool and of course Chelsea, who broke in before us, would have kept on winning it. A club the size of Ipswich (and a town the size of Ipswich) could be champions at the beginning of the sixties, and indeed challenged at the end of the seventies and the beginning of the eighties (runners-up in ’81 and ’82). Watford were runners-up in ’83. That just isn't going to happen again. Leicester, I hear you say? The aberration that proves the rule. And the fact that a club that was champions seven years ago and F.A. Cup winners two years ago has just been relegated tells you everything about the way the power structure inevitably reasserts itself. Of course, it was not at all in the plan that we should be doing what we're doing, but that's another story. For the likes of Liverpool and United to go trophyless for this and that season… well, put it this way, we're fucking up everyone's plans.
Nah, nothing dramatic… We would have been mid-table, the occasional relegation and coming up again the following season or two seasons down the line. We would have been a selling club, obliged to sell off our best academy products to keep ourselves ticking over. Perhaps, just perhaps, the occasional League Cup. But even those are hoovered up by the big boys now (with us the first in line).
But we would have still been here. There would have been fewer of us, of course, because that's the way of the world. The supporters are the only semi-permanent thing about a club, beyond the club as an idea and a dream.

We just don’t know who would have bought us had Shinawatra not sold to ADUG.

Straumur Investment Bank invested into West Ham in 2009, maybe they would have come to City instead and we’d just have been a bottom half Prem club.

Also around that time Abdullah ben Nasser Al Thani invested in Malaga and got them into the CL quarters, maybe he would have come to City.

Or maybe John Wardle might have sold us to Mike Ashley a few years earlier!

 

[ShorehamCitizen]

Like Swansea when they were a Prem club.

 

[FantasyIreland]

The rags would still have a banner,they'd still be crowing about being the only club to win an inferior treble,Ferguson would be going to his grave a very contented and smug man,and their supporters heads would not have fell off over the past fortnight.