Damocles

23 is retired because it was Marc Vivien Foe's number, who was a City player when he died on the pitch in the 2003 Confederations Cups. We have a lovely memorial garden for him as well outside Eastlands that's cared for by the fans.

You guys make a compelling argument. Posting funny pictures automatically wins any debate, touché. This is a consequence of our unfortunately named Elite U-21s that has replaced our reserves. The basic premise, is that the U21 is a team that will enter the reserve league but also tour the world playing friendlies and learn about other academies. However, the rule that City have enforced upon themselves that they can only play for what is essentially our reserves until 21, after which they will be part of the first team and train at the same place. The guys who aren't ready for first team football get loaned out. The squad consists of people who would usually be classed as youth players, so it adds lots of new figures to City. There are people been given a number who I've never even seen mentioned for our reserves before, let alone the squad. I'm not sure I particularly agree with City on this one and think that the traditional reserve team has a role to play, yet it's the explanation of the mass of numbers.

As I said, I couldn't find the transfer info from the late seventies, early eighties but I'll take your word for it. If everybody had been at the club for four years, wouldn't that put you buying them in the timeframe that I mentioned?

Firstly, we haven't spent billions. I've told you a thousand times not to exaggerate. Secondly, you didn't spend over a £100m, but it's utterly stupid to believe that you would have done in a time where the transfer record was £100k In 1969, Villa had a share issue which raised £200,000 for the club, of which £140,000 was spent on new players. At the time, the transfer record was £165,000, so about 85% of the record. To try and put this in today's transfer terms, the current transfer record is £80m, of which 85% is £68m, so it's akin to going out and spunking that on a team now. Nowhere near City's spending, but not far off of Spurs. The season before this, you spent another £200k on players, including Hole. All of this is whilst you were in the Second Division. You spent another £200k on the Rioch brothers and Hamilton in the season where you were relegated to the old Third Division (note: never knew you guys ever dropped that low, guess we have something else in common!). When you were in the Third Division, you were still throwing money around, building a state of the art training ground and buying players, etc, etc. I can't seem to find any records on transfers between the late seventies and mid eighties when you were at your most successful, but I'm guessing that as your teamsheet changed quite heavily and you had two promotions in three years, you'd be an attractive club. I know that there was some boardroom turmoil with Ellis, but if you guys are spend £200k (when that was more than the actual transfer record) and building training grounds in the Third Division, I'd imagine that the club was pretty well off financially at that time. If anybody could fill me in on transfers between the the late seventies and early eighties, I'd appreciate it. I can see that McNaught was a club record fee, and Allan Evans was supposed to have cost a bit, but I can't nail down the figures anywhere. Our owner didn't become a fan of City until he bought it. We're a business, I don't want a fan to run the club (we've tried that and it took us 30 years to recover), I want businessmen to run the business side of the it. To think that anybody would buy a Premiership club without a plan to make money out of it is extremely naive. Even Abramovich and Mansour have plans to make money though over a longer term. People who are millionaires and have enough cash to buy a club didn't make that money by throwing it down the drain on a passion of theirs. Let the business people run that side of it, I don't want a fan to have access to transfer budgets at City, that's how we ended up with Steve Daley (funny story about him, we literally bought him because United put a bid in for him). I think I've answered this question, but I couldn't tell you either way about the wages you were giving players. If you can tell me another team who's combined transfer spending in a season was higher than the British transfer record, whilst in the Third Division, I'll concede the point. You'd have a point, if we didn't consistently break the transfer record many times before the Sheikh came, and we didn't consistently win trophies for the 80 years before Peter Swales had his way with us. Anyway, I'm not arguing with our record post-1980. There have been a few times where we've looked like we were starting to get somewhere, notably under Peter Reid and then Kevin Keegan but by and large we have been diabolically, and laughably poor. Watching City over the last twenty years is like watching your pet dog slowly die then suddenly been given a magic injection that turns it into a champion greyhound. As I say, I do know the facts and do know the history. Unfortunately, you seem to have an attitude that status of a club years ago doesn't matter, which is funny as if our achievements 35 years ago, do yours 30 years ago matter? Does the cutoff happen to be 33 years, after which time things no longer matter? Isn't that a bit convenient?

Just for the sake of completism: Champions of England: 1 Champions of Europe: 1 Football League Cups: 4 It's good, but not great. I'd bloody take it! You do realise that even Villa fans on the other thread admitted that you spent quite a bit during that period of time? You also realise that apart from Forest, there doesn't seem to be a single team post-war (and not that many pre-war) who have ever become successful without spending larger amounts of money? I also wasn't aware that Lerner was actually born and bred in Brum and had been a Villa fan all of his life. I'm also pretty sure that John Carew has always loved the Villa, and grew up idolising Dean Saunders. You also don't seem to have a basic memory of Premier League positions over the last few years, or an idea about City's youth setup. Apart from that those points though, the rest of the post was great. I particularly like the spaces, line breaks and other bits where you weren't writing. Oh, and: ASTON VILLA: GK 1 Jimmy Rimmer 10' DF 2 Kenny Swain DF 3 Gary Williams DF 4 Allan Evans DF 5 Ken McNaught MF 6 Dennis Mortimer © MF 7 Des Bremner FW 8 Gary Shaw FW 9 Peter Withe MF 10 Gordon Cowans MF 11 Tony Morley Substitutes: GK 16 Nigel Spink 10' DF Colin Gibson MF Andy Blair MF Pat Heard FW David Geddis Wiki tells me that you had 3 homegrown players in there and the rest were bought. 3 out of 16. 4 if you count Spink, as though he didn't come through at Villa, he certainly made his name there. This was 30 years ago too. Is this what you meant by "the footballing way"?

Sorry, I should have explained it better when it was posted. It's a little list showing the longest times between trophy wins for all of the major clubs in England. By trophy wins, we only really count the major honours. Indeed, Aston Villa's and (I think) Man United's include a 6 year break between the wars. I seem to recall Villa playing on during the start of the First World War because the FA/Chairman believed that it was a good recruiting tool at the time. I know that the FA Cup was held in '45 and the league started again in the year after. Anyway, the point of this interesting list is sort of to argue with the no history lot. I did write a lengthy post quite a few pages back that explained why our club hit such a massive turn and dropped through the divisions. One of the problems is that, over the the past decade or so, it seems that football was actually invented in 1992 and anything that happened beforehand is completely irrelevant. We may not have had this glittering history such as Liverpool have had or won a European Cup like yourselves, but we have pretty much consistently won trophies and being fighting for them our entire history. We've been involved in some of the biggest moments in English football history, such as the Meredith/Outcast thing. Yes, we fell away very badly in the mid seventies for reasons that I've outlined in a previous post but the post-92 football lot seem to think that we've just popped up from nowhere. I suppose it comes down to how you term "having history". We've always had a great home support, pretty consistently won/challenged for things pre '80, and have had a hand in some historic moments. However, we're currently in the worst spell in our history. So rightfully, it isn't history we lack, it's a present.

Length of highest barren spells in club's history: Liverpool.................24 years Everton..................24 years Tottenham..............30 years Man City.................34 years Aston Villa...............37 years Sunderland..............37 years Man Utd..................37 years Newcastle...............41 years Wolves...................41 years West Brom..............42 years Arsenal...................44 years Bolton....................49 years Chelsea..................50 years Blackpool................66 years Blackburn................67 years West Ham...............69 years Wigan....................78 years Birmingham..............88 years Stoke....................109 years Fulham...................131 years

Agrred, Adam Johnson's career has completely slid since he joined City.

Rubbish that Mancini is. All he's ever won is: Coppa Italia: 2000–01 Coppa Italia: 2003–04 Serie A: 2005–06; 2006–07; 2007–08 Coppa Italia: 2004–05; 2005–06 Supercoppa Italiana: 2005; 2006 We should have appointed MON, I mean, he's won the SPL 3 times, which is far stronger league than Italy. Much better he is!

Pretty much agree with the above. We have City fans around the world; in Australia, South Africa, the U.S., in Thailand, but they are mainly ex-pats who went over there and continued to follow their football team. We are nowhere near the level of the teams mentioned above in terms of international fanbase and I don't expect us to be any time in the next 20 years. The people who were in NY were the family crowd, a few of the Mad Hatter's (a bar where the NY City supporters club is based) and a few blues who travelled from around the U.S. I'm expecting a much better atmosphere from us against Dortmund in a few weeks. For those interested by the way, City are playing Club America on ESPN this Thursday night at 7.30 and all of the World Cup guys will be back, including Yaya and Silva, who are expected to start. After that, we've got Inter Milan and am thoroughly expecting us to get stuffed in that one.

The season before the takeover we were in the UEFA Cup. The season before that we finished one point off of the UEFA Cup.

He looks like his face is slowly melting.

. The Shiekh is here for the long term. That doesn't mean he doesn't expect us to be self sustaining in a few years, but even if we aren't he'll just throw money at it until we are. There's a very real and purposeful strategy in play at City, and we're about 18 months into a ten year plan. Also, we wouldn't be in trouble as we have zero debt (which was converted into equity), and the funds to pay the contracts of every signing, even without the Sheikh. Anyway, I still don't think a sale is absolutely necessary unless one side makes a concession, and I honestly don't see either doing it yet with so much of the window remaining. Milner has a history of playing for clubs after asking for a move, and being a professional about it. Whether the Villa fans will look at it the same way and get behind though remains to be seen.

Did you just skip over the Football League Champions, FA Cup Winners, European Cup Winners Cup Winners and League Cup Winners? Anyway, the runners up/playoff thing is there because the honours list he grabbed it off was in a book.

Well, obviously, given that you've acheived **** all in present or past. Whilst we may not have won as much in our history as your good selves, we weren't exactly formed yesterday. And apologies for the placement of the speech marks, it annoys me too bit I'm not the author of it.

What a strange thing to say whilst reading a thread titled "Let's all stare at Manchester City" :? I agree that supporting and following a team is different, but the point I was trying to make to Glaston was that to be such loud singers and live in NY, they must regularly attend WHL. I suppose that's why WHL gets 35,000 every week, because they have a huge global fan base and for years they have flocked from all over the world to watch their heroes such as Jason Cundy and Ruel Fox. Whereas our fanbase comes entirely from Stockport, and the 33,000 we used to pull in only had Second Division football to watch. The other 14,000 fans to our current attendance are people who we've tricked by changing the road signs round outside Manchester Airport.

Good point, well made. I don't particularly agree with the TV stuff, as it's the nature of the media. If you were Mancini or Viera and were asked "Would you like James Milner at Manchester City?", what exactly are they to say? If they no comment it, they'll get asked it 300 times in every press conference, if they say yes they're tapping up and if they say no, they're creating problems with a player that they may have to work with in the future, which may lead to consequences in the transfer deal. I think if you asked Viera if he'd like Roy Keane at City he'd say yes. It's no different from Dunny the other day saying that Milner shouldn't leave Villa, if you get asked the quesiton, you answer it in the least offensive way possible. You see, this is the problem though. You do have the right to demand any price, so if you weren't open to selling him at all, you'd have slapped a £1bn price tag on him. You must be open to selling him purely because oyu've created a somewhat realisitc price tag. For a youngish player, especially an English one, who has just come off of the best season of his life, £30m isn't really completely out of reach of City and I presuming that Lerner and MON know that. However, it is obvious that City feel that he isn't worth that to us at present so we are negotiating down, as every club in the world does. Just because we do have lots of money doesn't mean that we're willing to get ripped off all the time. One of the problems we now face is down to the Lescott transfer. Hughes told the board that Lescott is a player who was absolutely vital to his plans, and we should pay whatever price we could to get him. Due to this, Everton soon realised that we coveted him, and slapped a £30m price tag on him, which eventually came down once Lescott stuck in a transfer request. To be honest, I try not to come across as arrogant and as on a forum it's extremely easy to read words that aren't there and get the wrong impression. I did it not two days ago with an exchange with TrentVilla. The reality of the situation is hard to ignore though, and I don't believe it's arrogance to say that if we are determined not to go to £30m, then we won't and will move on to the next target on the list.

Last season we played in England, errr....some places called 英国 and 英國, L'Angleterre, oh we had a couple games in that Αγγλία place, which we went to after we played the earlier round in Англия, finally getting knocked out of the competition when we were in Inglaterra. As you can see, we've really had lots of travelling over the last year or so, and to afford ANOTHER trip to the US was a step too far. Dude - seriously, don't you just get bored correcting people in EVERY thread regarding Man.City... How many other forums do you do this on for other clubs? Not taking the piss, genuinely curious... Please read the place names again. As some of the BM users would say *facepalm*

I'd imagine a fair few of the Spurs fans at the "New York Challenge" trophy games actually live in and around NY. It's called having a global fan base. They must be HUGE fans, living in New York and commuting to WHL every two weeks. Must also earn a lot of money.

Fair price? You needed money and sold Wright-Phillips to Chelsea for £24m. We aren't so desperate for cash as you were back then and prices have generally gone up since you sold SWP. So why on Earth, given the above (not to mention Milner being better than SWP) should we accept £24m? He's also a far better player at his position than Lescott is at his - another player that moved for £24m. You've bought this upon yourself really. You knew Chelsea had money and got greedy over SWP, yet you expect teams not to do the same for you? You're talking about something you obviously don't remember very well. SWP was sold for £21m for a start. Secondly, Chelsea bid £20m which we rejected, SWP came forward with a transfer request and we sold for £21m to save a bit of face. I know, I know. I suggest you read back through the forum and see how many times this sort of language is used to describe the Sheikh though. We warn people on Bluemoon for this sort of thing, and we're a far more liberal forum moderation wise than VT.

What a classy bunch of fans you guys are.

Right, got you. I wasn't aware that by "attempt to unsettle our player" you meant "bid for him". Anyway, you completely missed the point. I was quoting somebody who said that it is our fault if we don't sign him for not meeting your price demands. I rebutted with the fact that the price demands are astronomical for Milner and you have effectively priced him out of a move. Personally, I really want him as I've rated him since his Newcastle days, but most City fans are of the impression that they could take him or leave him. We have players such as Ireland who can play in the centre and do a good job for us, so the need for Milner is negligible if we keep Ireland. He isn't this type of player that we will do anything to sign, as you can tell by the way that we've conducted business. If we wanted Milner desperately, we would have paid the £6m difference and signed him immediately. As I said, the reports of £24m is more than fair for Milner in my view and if Villa try to hold out for £30m I can't see us taking the deal. Let's say he does stay and you sell him next season for £12m. Is the £12m loss of revenue really worth it? And for what exactly?

Every team in the world taps players up, Villa included. If you think that somebody is going to bid tens of millions of pounds for a player without having some sort of a guarantee that the player is interested or willing to listen, then you're a far more naive man than I thought. Gary Lineker wrote a good article on it here

Nah, Gary Cook is a Brum fan anyway (just to endear him to your hearts that little bit more). Besides, most people who actually know and speak to Cook say that he's a very nice guy and the owners certainly seem to think he's good at his job, or he'd be gone. I've met him a couple of times in passing, and he always came across as a really passionate and genuine guy. The recent Tears of Joy video on the OS had the principle of a school in New York calling him an "inspirational human being" and a bunch of other things. As they have directly worked with him, and (presumably) you've read a few articles on the man, I'll stick my opinion with them thanks

I presume your frustration/impatience is directed at Man City as they are the only ones that can get this sorted by paying the asking price. There is nothing Aston Villa can do , well apart from lower the asking price, which I would suggest would not be a very good president for us to set. The ball is in Man City's court. They know the asking price. Why this down to us? We've said how much we'll pay, and it's a good, fair price for Milner. You guys can either drop the price to be more realistic (unless you seem to think that Milner is worth £30m) or can keep an unhappy player and we'll turn our attentions towards Arteta or Ramires?