bobrivers said:
1. That very well may be but top clubs and Chelsea among them have their own experts in that area, I can assure you, and with the money we've got, we could afford the best and so could other big boys. If anything, those clubs dealt with it much longer than City since before sheik decided to buy your club you weren't exactly associated with top quality players.
2.How are you planning to make that chunk back, as you put it? Your wage bill alone is skyrocketing already, you don't have any income from the CL, you haven't won anything in a very long time and you'll have to spend a whole lot more both in fees and wages before you even reach the level of today's Chelsea to say nothing of the likes of ManUnited, Real or Barca. You keep insisting with that 'image rights' issue as if it's an answer to all City problems while you seem to ignore the fact that until you start delivering on the pitch your players' value as a marketing tool will also mean very little.
Of course,if your owners continue to pump hundreds of millions into the squad year after year while writing them off as gifts the law of averages says you're bound to get there eventually, probably would still take a few years to do that and it will be even harder and more costly to remain there. By that time your debt will make Abramovich's spending look like a kid's visit to the toy store. But that will have absolutely nothing to do with Gary Cook's innovative business policies.
1. I have had professional experience of working for Champions League football clubs as clients, including some of the English Big Four. I need your assurances on nothing. They may have their own experts, but not with the experience and track record from where these things are practised to the most telling degree. By way of comparison, having someone with experience of the sports industry in this area in the States compared to the UK is like having someone with experience of playing for Barcelona and comparing their experience to that of a bloke who plays for Huddersfield Town. (Exaggeration for illustrative purposes).
2. We're planning to make a chunk back, yes. Say we had managed to sign Kaka in January. We'd have offered him a huge basic salary plus big image rights payments and would have taken over his image rights. Beckham expected to pick up GBP 128 million in LA over five years. If we had bought Kaka for GBP 91 million and paid him something similar over the life of his contract (including for image rights) but exploited his image rights so that we received GBP 100 million over the life of his contract, then the net cost of the deal to the club would be greatly reduced. This isn't rocket science. And nor is it something Chelsea have so far pursued with any serious intent. City, currently, are doing so.
Your third, unnumbered, point is rather confused. You're wrong that our debt will become enormous if the Sheikh keeps writing off money. We'll have no debt.
As it happens, I currently live in Russia, studied Russian at university and have created my own business here. I was also here in the 1990s, when your owner made all his money. I've even acted for companies ultimately owned by him. I know more about him, believe me, than you ever could. And there's no comparison between him and our owners.
I'm going to be careful with what I say about Roman Arkardievich for legal reasons. But I do think it's clear that Chelsea doesn't dovetail with any of his other business interests and he hasn't generally treated Chelsea in an especially businesslike fashion. The big thing with our owners, and you'll have to look elsewhere on this site and earlier in this thread for it, is that their overriding interest is in the development of the SportCity site and surrounding land in Manchester.
They expect to make money from that in the long run, which is what, as a sovereign investment fund from a Gulf State, they want to do. They have a long term plan, and the success of the club is extremely helpful to that. They have immense wealth and so are prepared to sink large sums into City as the anchor tenant of the SportCity site to make everything else that comes there even more attractive. They can still hope, in the long term (I'm talking decades), to get it back.
Compare and contrast with Abramovich, whose primary motivation for buying Chelsea was to create an international profile to make it difficult for Putin to have him arrested (ever heard of Khodorkovsky?). Is Roman losing interest? Looks that way from outside. When was the last time he financed the acquisition of a GBP 20 million player? Even though you have a fantastic opportunity this summer, with United and Liverpool both failing to improve meaningfully, no one of real clout has arrived (though Zhirkov is a super player - I've seen a lot of him over here). You'd be real favourites for the league with one or two class additions, but they haven't yet been forthcoming.
On the other hand, our owners have the motive to keep on and on and on building the club up. It's not just the club, but the site that will carry on making money. And transforming the club that's there into a major force can only help in a big, big way. I'm not unrealistic, and I don't expect top four next season, but it will come. You, and other fans of the Big Four, really haven't yet realised what you're dealing with.
