It feels to me that the whole organisation has taken its eye off the football team, with a delusion that Pep would just keep us elite ongoing.
I think there’s too much going on and not enough people in the right positions to get it done, with too much distance in the line of management from the football team and fanbase to the top of the whole of the City Football Group organisation.
There’s the obsession with money which is all it feels like the club is bothered about, money money money, then the multiple teams across the CFG (so unimportant to me I couldn’t name them all off the top of my head), the youth teams, the women’s team, the Co-Op Live, the new North Stand, the hotel, news of further hotels, the women’s training ground, the 130 charges, the APT case, an obsession with organising ticketing to worldwide football fans (whether they support City or not), money money money…
We must be the only football club, maybe even only sports club, who doesn’t have a CEO. Ferran Soriano is the CEO of the CFG, not City. How many other positions do we have that are the same? Surely we should have a CEO for the club, with a boardroom, who solely work for Manchester City so that the interests of our football club are being worked on daily?
It feels like that entire organisation isn’t concentrating on Manchester City’s men’s first team enough. There’s too much going on, and it feels like they’re too detached from the day-to-day running of Manchester City and too detached from its core supporters.
The football team has seen a stark decline in quality. Signings have been hit and miss and of a general quality that isn’t at the standard it used to be, going back a few years now. Looking around the pitch in the last couple of games where it’s been really lacklustre and boring to watch with low quality. I’ve been thinking, where have all the elite players gone? The two centre halves (Dias and Gvardiol) have been the only two who’ve played in the last two games that you’d rate at the quality from the past. When a fifth choice midfielder playing right back is getting MOTM, and the best we can put out is a load of players at the end of their time with us, something’s not right.
And look at what’s happened to our wage bill and structure. For years we had elite players like Agüero, David Silva, Fernandinho, Kompany etc. and they weren’t on record wages. Even De Bruyne who was the country’s highest paid player built his wages up over six years before he was. United always had a higher wage bill than we did. However, the money a lot of them are banged on straight away on their first contract at City these days: Grealish £300k/wk, Marmoush £295k/wk, Gvardiol who’s only young £200k/wk, Kovačić a bit part player on £150k/wk, Christian McFarlane £15k/wk (Foden who was playing regularly was only on £12k/wk until he was 21)… have a look at other clubs’ wage bills (Van Dijk is Liverpool’s second highest earner on just £220k/wk), we are now paying miles more than everyone else. Putting Haaland on £525k/wk. What’s that about?
We used to be able to entice players to sign for us and be able to keep them for years because of the football and ambition of the club, now it’s like we’ve gone ‘sod it, we’ll just pay them loads’. The club seems to want to milk every fan for every penny they can get, pricing out core supporters of this club and aiming to replace them with worldwide nobodies whether they support City or not which is ruining our stands, yet they are hammering out top wages like there’s no tomorrow.
Everything at the club feels like it’s being run by people who aren’t dedicated solely to the interests of the Manchester City men’s first team and its long loyal local supporters. People who are the top brass of the CFG shouldn’t be running Manchester City, that should be left to a dedicated boardroom of people who work solely for City. That way, all the other projects that are going on can be left to those who need to run them, and the day-to-day business of running City properly - from recruitment, to wage structure, to liaising with fans - can be run by them.
