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.

I'm sure I heard that City have given out 58 squad numbers for the start of the season, without yet issuing one to Kolarov.

:shock:

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?

Oh aren't you just a little dickens.

Sorry, maybe you actually misread over the part where I asked did we spend billions? Did we even in fact spend over £100m? You are quite clearly rattled having to go to these lengths, on another clubs forum to get your point across, aren't you?

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

On the point about how much we spent. I believe that was already answered in the thread "Can a team buy a title". Specifically it was answered on page 2 by bickster. Read that if you are still confused pal.

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.

No, Lerner wasn't born in Brum. I have no problems with foreign people owning football clubs, not a problem at all. On the point about him being a fan, it is widely known that Lerner became a fan when he was studying at university here. When did your owner become a fan steeped down with a beloved interest in Man City, other than £££$$$? Answer that.

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).

You have also completely misunderstood my point about "the footballing way". Other teams around Villa spent more in comparison. Your club have spent over £200m in two years. That is a ridiculous sum and shows how low-time City were. Did we win two league cups by spending hundreds of millions of pounds? By upping players wages to 4x their normal value?

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.

Who cares if they were bought? Clubs buy every season. However, clubs buy at reasonable prices. They may get mugged off a few million here and there by rivals. Football is about bringing in the right players and deserving to be up with the best. Man City have never shown any indication they deserve to be up there. Never brought in the right players over the last 20 years to improve their standing in the league. Never even got close to the famous "glass ceiling", have they? Nope. Without the Sheikh your club would be down where they belong. Where their rightful place in order would be, unless they managed to get someone in with an eye for proper talent, who brought them up that way.

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.

Face facts your club were a loser club before this Sheikh came in. You got lucky. As I said earlier like the tramp who found a tenner. Happy days then.

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?

You just have to ask what have we won in 34 years

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!

We did it without spending billions and bringing in players who didn't care about our club. Has that special ring to it, doesn't it? Knowing you did it the proper way, the footballing way without getting some foreign sugar daddy. If it wasn't for him City would be relegated in a few years time and back along with the dirt, where they belong.

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"?

So this is Man City's most barren spell in their history.

And yet everyone is talking about them more than any other club?

Interesting.

I'm guessing our 37 years is 1920 - 1957. But seeing as there was a World War in that time, that's a little unfair on that squad.

Edit: Can't be - Second Division Champions: 1937-38. When would our 37 years have been then? We've got fairly consistent honours.

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

Hasn't this word removed grabbed the cash in his little fat hands for a place on the bench at the club where careers go backwards yet?

I'm getting bored of hope now. I am a villa fan, after all.

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

They can wank over these signings all they like. With Mancini in charge and a coaching staff consisting of Lombardo and Platt, these c**ts will find a way of **** it all up. Citehh and the Manc equivalent of the noses.

From the mouths of success they'll grasp failure.

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.

It is obvious they don't deserve to up there with the pinnacle of English football. Lets be honest, they were a low mid table team before this guy came in. They were the scruff of the Premier League. We worked our way up there. They have to rely on all these millions. Its like the ugly guy walking about with the fit wife. The only reason she's with him is because of his wealth. If he was dirt cheap he'd be the tramp. Man City are and always will be that man.

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.

if they don't the arab's will soon sell up and move on and leave them in a whole lot of trouble.

.

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.

Oh, and this isn't a City argument, more of a general argument

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.

I dont mean just this very thread, i mean in every thread regarding City... quite frankly i dont even read your posts anymore, if i wanted to know more about Man.City then i'd just go on the Man City site... (so apologies if you cracked a joke and i missed 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.

I really don't think I have missed the point. It's absolutely Man City's fault if they don't end up with the player.

You can't have it both ways. You can't both claim that you haven't unsettled the player and claim that we're risking keeping an unhappy player who was not unhappy until you started making noise about signing him. You've unsettled him; there are no two ways about it. You have Mancini, Shay Given, and Patrick Viera all on television talking about how they would love to have him at Manchester City in addition to talk from whomever about some impending second bid. I realize that this is part and parcel of the transfer game these days, as our players have also responded to questions about other teams' players, but you can't publicly conduct this business, trying to pressure us into a deal, and then imply that we are somehow holding him back.

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.

I don't know what our asking price is exactly, but I want to be clear - I don't think James Milner is worth 30 million pounds in this or any universe. I wouldn't blame Man City in the slightest for not paying it. On the other hand, we have the right to demand whatever price we want for him because we are not willing participants in this particular transaction. If we were holding out for a ridiculous sum for a player like Steve Sidwell, whom we are pretty clearly open to selling, then I would take your point; however, this is a player we would have had no intention of selling until we were dragged into a negotiation against our will by Manchester City.

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.

I just think your postings on the Milner topic seem to have a touch of the arrogance that can come with being able to afford to buy anyone you want.

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.

Oh, you're in for it now PompeyVillan! Damocles will soon correct you and name all the countries that Man City have played in..

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*

... If Spurs and Sporting fans can afford their season tickets, a £3000 trip to the US, then the cost to travel around Europe all season then more power to them (the jammy bastards).

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.

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?

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.

Yes because one fan's opinion is representative of us all.

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.

Just sell him. He is overrated, £30million is crazy money for him!

Let that small club from Manchester have him. The equivalent in size to Birmingham or West Ham.. They just happen to be making a fake club from some camel humpers money! What a great way to build a club, history and tradition means nothing anyway! :winkold:

What a classy bunch of fans you guys are.

Of course it's down to you. When he joined us two years ago, the player signed a contract stating he would play for us for four years in exchange for a certain salary. We are only two years into that contract, so he has two more years to fulfill it. We want him to keep playing for us, so if you want him you'll have to pay whatever price we have set. Otherwise, he will stay with us. By all accounts he's a model professional, so I am not at all concerned about 'keeping an unhappy player.'

It's the height of arrogance for Man City to swoop in, attempt to unsettle our player, and then criticize us for keeping him against his will. He is contracted to us!

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?

Because you want him and we don't want to sell him . The kid has been blatantly ( Allegedly :| ) tapped up from your end which has unsettled our player thus you pay a price for that in my eyes . Villa know only you will pay anywhere near 30 mill and Villa would prefer to keep him and so be it if we lose money on him next year we did the same with GB . There will be a compromise in my opinion around 27 -28 . I don't think he is worth it but then again never thought Lescott / Adebayor or Kaulo Toure were worth the money either . For what its worth I would prefer Arteta myself over Milner aswell .

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

, this should be sorted by now! We need to prepare for next season, it's ridiculous

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?