Hi Tom I studied history at MMU and i remember all our essay questions and dissertation headers were things like "To what extent..."
If you compare the profile of the club prior to the takeover to now, without question it has changed, but the factors that have contributed to that change are what are probably the most important points to consider in your project. Whilst I'm sure you can appreciate the huge rise in attention the club has received in recent years because of the signings and the money, branding is fundamental in the transformation of the club. Whilst HRH Sheikh Mansour wants his football team to win, as would any owner, you have to remember that buying the football club, as cold as it may sound is at the end of the day a business project. Referring to the club as a business does not take any soul away from the club (even though David Conn might argue it does in 'Richer Than God'), football clubs have been businesses for 20/25 years or so now, you could argue even longer. In the past 10 years however, football clubs have gone even further from being large businesses to becoming global brands. If you look at Liverpool, Madrid, Barca, United, Bayern and even to a lesser extent Chelsea and Arsenal, you can go anywhere in the world near enough, and you see someone who either has a shirt from one of these clubs or calls himself a supporter in someway. The owners at City obviously would like the club to become self sufficient in the long run, and they appreciate that Global Branding and transforming the clubs stature from at continental notoriety, to a global brand such as Barca, Madrid, United, McDonalds, Nike, Pepsi, Coca Cola etc. If you look at the investment on and off the pitch in the past 3/4 seasons, you can see the steps of this taking shape; players with international pedigree, the on going development of a state of the art training facility and the opening of club shops and youth academies in the UAE and US. Everything around the Stadium represents this as well, the sponsorship deals, renaming Sportscity, the Etihad Campus, it's all part of the plan to make Manchester City Football Club a global brand. City's marketing team have been on the ball for years in my opinion, both in advertising and in merchandise (remember the old t-shirts with City in an Oasis style logo? and Welcome to Manchester, and the other posters of SWP, Bellamy and Adebayor around Manchester). Like him or not, Gary Cook brought in some clever ideas from Nike which helped put the club on the tip of many peoples tongues in and around Manchester and the club is now at the level above that, now the club has to reach globally. The idea behind it is to get people wearing 'City', talking 'City' - buying 'City' and that is seen in so many ways, look at how many people have bought Mancini scarfs (I Know most had them already but a great number have been bought because of Bobby - Most bought by women my mum's age who think he's handsome, i Think! haha). If you go in to the club shop you can see anything from cups to pens etc with City on it, things that can be used everyday, not just on a matchday, because the advantages of having a City product that can be used everyday undoubtedly sells more that a product that can only be used on a matchday. Even the retro shirts are part of the marketing genius at City, the shirts that make dad's say "i had that when i was a kid", it brings back memories and sugars them into buying them, preying on the sensitive memories of City - and for the younger fan, the retro shirts can make them feel like they were there when we were shit ;-) haha
It's all part of getting the image out there into the global market.
I could go on about the profile, and media attention etc. But I'm not doing your essay for you
