@umhoops Is this accurate?
Excuse me, Chelsea buys superstars and renders them has-beens
I guess now it may be “we over-pay flashes in the pan”
Ha, I know it is a joke, but I don’t really think it is right.
Man City has a lot of money that it uses to its advantage, but buying superstars isn’t really what City does.
Most of their best players weren’t really “superstars” when they were purchased.
City buys the guys that are going to become superstars. (Which is also very expensive, of course)
I’d say Real Madrid is the team that buys superstars effectively, and Chelsea is one that buys superstars and fails 
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The shirt Dylan wears when he watches Star Wars…
I just like teasing MC fans since they have every advantage and knows only winning. And I root for Liverpool.
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I definitely wouldn’t say that rooting for Man City over the last however long has been “know only winning” unless you are only talking about under Pep, FWIW.
Either way, my point is just that the financial advantage is used on someone like Pep, not on signing the most famous players.
Someone like Chelsea is the Kansas who signs the Dickinsons and the Storrs.
If there’s an empire club that only knows winning it is definitely Real Madrid BTW.
I always get a kick out of, and not picking on anybody’s choice here on who to root for, when supporters take a go at City for financials and are fans of Chelsea, Liverpool, ManU, Arsenal or even Newcastle now and act like they chose the quaint cute little club down the street. No doubt City spent to get to the big boys table in the late 2000’s and early to mid 2010’s, but haven’t been the principal offenders at just throwing wads of cash at holes in the club in a long time.
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Fair point and I was mostly poking the bear. In reality my fandom consists of asking my son how Liverpool did or if their game is on. We hosted a British soccer coach for a summer a few years ago and he was a Liverpool fan so that got my son hooked.
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Yeah, this is kind of the whole thing.
At present, City is probably one of the more effectively and responsibly run teams as far as financials go. (It helps that they now make boat loads of money )
To get there, and to be fair it is almost impossible to get to the big boys table in any other way, City had to spend a ton of money. No doubt about that. And that’s where most of the investigations and alleged improprieties and whatever lie of course.
It’s also crazy that City’s best player of the next decade – after all of that – is probably going to be a local academy kid.
I feel like there’s a part you’re leaving out….
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That it is Abu Dhabi money? Yeah, of course.
My point was just that City’s strategy to dominate the PL hasn’t been buy fancy superstars is all I was really trying to say
It’s pretty clearly been to use incredible financial might to do everything else right – coaching, scouting, development, etc.
Opposite of something like PSG.
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If we are found guilty, I am all in for a Championship season run. I miss my rainy Tuesday nights at Stoke anyway.
Meh, none of these clubs really does that much development. Liverpool has five English players on its team and Arsenal has seven. Under Arsene Wenger, Arsenal would always raid the best players out of France.
In the big picture they’re all huge sharks in the water, it’s just a matter of degree.
That’s what I was referring to right? Most of that stuff happened to get City into the mix, not recently AFAIK.
I don’t think you can judge development of youth players based on nationalities. Most of these clubs have foreign youth players in their academies
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I support my ancestral clubs HNK Rijeka and APOEL
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Yeah, academies are basically just an arms race to get players in the door and amass talent (usually for profit).
Miffed to be missing my beloved boyhood* club Atlanta United tonight.
*I had an extended adolescence.
Does DCFC count as European Soccer? They play in Hamtramck after all.
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Real Madrid is special, as usual.