Search: ' Sheikh Mansour'

Ian Farrell grins and bears it as his team's wealth threatens to unbalance global football and alienate their own supporters

A day after the collapse of their audacious bid for Kaka, Manchester City spent a whopping £14 million on Mr Craig Bellamy, prompting Sky Sports into perhaps the least appropriate ever use of the phrase “soften the blow”. It seemed that after four months of rumour and bravado, the era of Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan and the Abu Dhabi United Group had well and truly begun.

Read more…

With Aston Villa having an outside chance of breaking into the top four and the billionaire owners at Man City the four Premier League giants might be starting to panic

It’s rare that more than one of the Big Four has a bad weekend. That all should fail to score on the same day, November 24 – with Fulham and Newcastle’s draws at Liverpool and Chelsea, respectively, treated like cup shocks – was a statistical fluke. Nonetheless the fact that the cartel have looked unexpectedly vulnerable at times this season ought to be a cause for celebration, given that their domestic dominance is sapping the life out of the league. Aston Villa’s goalless home draw with Man Utd – greeted by a curious, cricket-derived headline in the Express, Villa’s Bunnies Find Some Bite – might not seem like a sign of changing times given that it simply ended a run of 14 defeats against the same opponents. But it followed on from a comfortable win at Arsenal the previous week and a widespread sense that, finally, here was a club well placed to break into the elite, at the expense of a team being widely derided as “bottlers”.

Read more…

Manchester City’s owners have divided opinion over the years, but the latest incumbents have been welcomed deliriously. David Conn wonders if the fans’ loyalty is being exploited

The takeover of Manchester City was celebrated uproariously by most of the club’s supporters, but it prompted me instead to question the very basis of fans’ loyalty to their clubs. I am talking not about today’s surreal ownership by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, but a deal that looks positively homely by comparison, the 1994 City takeover by Francis Lee.

Read more…

Friday 2 All league football in Italy is suspended after the death of a policeman in a riot outside Catania’s stadium during their match with Palermo. “What we’re witnessing has nothing to do with football, so Italian football is stopping,” says Federation boss Luca Pancalli.

Read more…