Dave Ewing's Back 'eader said:
corky1970 said:
nearly every column inch describes City in such a way.
Arab money, Oil dollars, megabucks...etc
if our owners had white skins and weren't Muslims i don't think we'd be referred to as this all the time.
you never here the source of other clubs "sugar daddies"
billionaires own a large percentage of Premier clubs, why don't we here their industry prefixing any description about their club ?
Abramovitch and CFC have come in for a substantial amount of criticism but they seem to have weathered that particular storm, but I think it is the above combination that generates most of the criticism. Were the Good Sheik a WASP with respected offices on Wall Street the money, and consequently the success, might produce a different reaction. We never hear of MANUre having Jewish owners, or funded with dubious dollars. Oil is something that provokes a mighty reaction in a lot of people who fill up at the pumps, and chuck in Muslim as well, and yer have a pretty pickle!
Abramovich is a Jew. Big difference between him and the Glazers in that he puts money into his shitty little club, and they take money out of theirs. Thats the reason its never mentioned the Glazers are Jews is because of the way they exploit their club. Imagine reading an article along the lines of ''Manchester United and their 100s of millions of fans are exploited by conniving and greedy Jews''. There woud be carnage.
For the sake of clarity I should add that I am not arguing the Glazers are thieving shysters because they are Jews. Our club is controlled by a non-Jewish Yank, Stan Kroenke, and he is exactly the same. Its the American way. Scousers would also agree with this after being shafted by Gillett/Hicks.
Most fans would prefer an Arab/Russian owner to any others, for the simple reason they spend money.
The minority shareholder at Arsenal is Alisher Usmanov. A (muslim) Russian who is far wealthier than Abramovich. Some of our fans don't want him, because of his business background (all Russian oligarchs are dodgy) and because we would then carry the stigma of being a sugardaddy club. The majority,however, are coming round to the conclusion that he would be the lesser of two evils.
Actually I reckon you have taken less stick over your money than Chelsea did over theirs.