Thad Williamson said:
Thanks you all. I do still lurk on here periodically, but save posting for a smaller forum, and also have a blog at mancity.theoffside.com which has a predominantly American readership.
I did sour not so much on City but on the bitterness of the "discussions" around here during the Thaksin days. As to the current situation, the influx of money is yet another sign that football as a whole needs to decide whether it's going to be a completely unconstrained commercial enterprise. As all of us understand things have been rigged in favor of the big 4 for a long time and it seems to take an ADUG to have any chance of breaking that oligopoly. There has to be a better way to ensure both more competitiveness and equity within the division and provide some reasonable limitations on how much money clubs can spend, but we are some way off from seeing that happen.
In the meantime for City specifically, these are exciting times (obviously!)--we have a legitimate chance to be competitive at the very top, and there are a lot of signs that the ownership group understands and respects the club's past and its supporters. I don't think entering into a new period of hopefully greater success necessarily means jettisoning what has been special about City in the past. In that sense I admire Prestwich Blue's long post in response to Shindler on the other thread.
I took a different view from you on that smaller board (on which I no longer post) with regard to Thaksin, Thad. In hindsight, you were right. I considered that, when Thaksin arrived on the scene, City were going nowhere, and needed new direction, new impetus and new money. I thought he could provide it, and let my enthusiasm for change cloud my judgement.
Looking at it now, he was someone who really never should have been invited to provide it. I dread to think what might have happened had there been no takeover in August/September of last year. However, now he's gone and we have much better owners in place so all's well that seems to be progressing well, to adapt a phrase, so on balance I'm just happy to be where we are now. There's no point in doing anything other than allowing bygones to be bygones.
In terms of the ethics of what we're doing now - well, that needs to be viewed in the context of the times. I'd love for English football to return to the way it was when I started watching in the seventies in terms of it being a genuine competition: pretty well anyone could come from nowhere to win, or challenge seriously for, the title (even relatively small clubs like Forest or Ipswich), and teams could charge through the divisions to prosper in the top flight three or four years after playing at the fourth level (Swansea, Watford and Wimbledon all enjoyed meteoric rises). Those things would only be possible with vast injections of cash now, sadly, and it's hard to see that changing any time soon.
In the meantime, bring on ADUG, say I. When I first started watching City, we had a brief taste of success (a League Cup win, missing out on the title by a point, winning games in Europe against the likes of Juve and Milan). Since then, by and large, there's been little to write home about, but I've been there through all the bad times - physically for many of them, emotionally when geographical, financial or family factors rendered my actual presence impossible. I've never been in it for the glory and have never expected a ceaseless parade of trophies, but always hoped that at some point I'd get another taste of the kind of excitement I felt as a kid, when we were regarded as a club that might genuinely win stuff.
That used to be possible through other means. An inspired managerial appointment could turn a struggling club around completely (as had been seen with the likes of Shankly, Revie, Mercer and Allison, and Clough and Taylor). A great crop of kids coming through at once might do the same. Now, the oligopoly, to use your word (which is absolutely the right one), has constructed for itself such an inbuilt financial supremacy that only the involvement of someone like ADUG can break it.
Why, then, when they come along and are led to choose us by virtue of certain fortuitous circumstances, do we accept our lot, wave them on their way and wallow in mediocrity? Why should we? Why should there be an entrenched elite who can't be challenged? And why, if someone is lucky enough to be given the wherewithal to challenge it, should we be embarrassed about it being us?
No, in the circumstances, we're entitled to be excited about it, and I am. This being City, and given our rollercoaster history and propensity to be on the most familiar of terms with Mr Cock Up, one can't help suspecting the ride may not always be smooth. But it certainly promises to be exciting, so why not get excited about it?
