Anyone who thinks City “won the lottery” need to take a closer look at the facts. Soon after we moved into , what was at the time , The City Of Manchester stadium , we had a guy on the board called Alistair MacIntosh. The club was looking for investment , possibly from abroad , and sent MacIntosh on a 6 month tour around the globe to seek out potential investors. As a result , Thaksin Shinawatra from Thailand , became the major shareholder. Some time later of course , Shinawatra had criminal accusations to answer to in his native land , and as such , could not continue in his role at the club. His representatives approached His Highness Sheik Mansour , of the Abu Dhabi Emarati Royal Family , and the rest , as they say is history. Modern day football at the highest level , has long been dependent on “outside investment” , since Sky TV and other sponsors , started to plough serious amounts of money into the game. So rather than “winning the lottery” I would suggest that what City did , was recognise how the game was to be financed in the future , would be completely different to what had taken place in the past. Man Utd recently signed a record breaking sponsorship kit deal for £750 million , outside investment that is no different to what the ADU group have been doing at City. As I recall , Everton fans (the people’s club - apparently) were amongst the biggest critics of what had happened at City - yet Bill Kenwright sold the club to an Arab billionaire. I don’t hear any protests from Everton fans about that though. Similarly , if Sheikh Mansour would have offered to buy Newcastle off Ashley , would the Geordie fans have had a big protest against the deal ? - saying “nah thanks pet - we divvin want nah Arab billionaires at our club”. Bitterness and jealousy are indeed 2 words that spring to mind . In contrast , I was at the LC final a few years ago - we beat Sunderland- and their fans stood on the ramparts after the game and , despite losing , applauded City fans all the way back to their coaches.