Sportswash! - Let’s oil stare at Manchester City!

[Reality]

You just have to ask what have we won in 34 years - the 34 years in which City has won NOTHING?

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.

[Damocles]

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.

[GarethRDR]

So rightfully, it isn't history we lack, it's a present.

What you need is a German goalkeeper with a broken neck and a cheeky Georgian genius.

[arkvillan]

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. how old are you

[The_Rev]

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.

[Reality]

Throw in an FA Cup final and Carling Cup final appearance and not bad at all.

Did we spend over £100m for any of those trophies? Nope, did it the proper way. The fact City have had to do it to even get close to the top shows how unbelievably shit and poxy their club was and still is. Like the tramp who found a tenner.

[Damocles]

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"?

[Reality]

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

[LondonLax]

Every club buys their success.

Hey, Man City were a club in such a position that they needed a multi billionare to buy them success (though they still havn't had any as yet), but every club does it to some degree

[Damocles]

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?

[LancsVillan]

Damocles - as you know the facts you will also know that team you picked up was created totally by selling Gray, Gidman and Deehan . In fact it cost less than Steve Salt and Kevin Reeves. Of the first 11 I count at least 8 of them as being at the club at least 4yrs before we won the league, Peter Wither being the final piece of the jigsaw for a whopping 500k.

[Damocles]

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?

[BOF]

Are we trying to compare here how we built our title winning team with what Citeh are doing to build theirs now?

[Reality]

Yes.

[PompeyVillan]

[OutByEaster?]

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:

[NurembergVillan]

[The_Randy_Villan]

Can Citeh gel quickly enough in time to win the league though?

[Reality]

[MCU]