If Dubai came back and bought you off FSG, pouring money in and bringing you back to the top table people like wickedbark may walk away but 99% of you would go with the ride and not question it, whatever you say now. I've said it before and some of you have agreed with me - as football fans, we have an incredible capacity for hypocrisy and delusion. "Our" player does something wrong and we support him. Another club's player does the same thing and he's a cheat. Does it bother anyone on here that you wear a shirt with the name of a bank that was recently handed the second highest fine for money-laundering?
Great response, first of all.
And to be honest, I get what you're saying. But I'm not sure you're really understanding our position. See, I think I can understand, to a degree, how it much have felt for City fans, after decade(s?) in the doldrums without winning trophies, and the latter of which was spent seesawing in the lower divisions, to get a Knight in shining armour that pumps Ca$h into your club and brings you up to play at the "big" table with the big players. In one swoop (two actually!) you became owned by multibillionaires that can afford to bring all the top players into your club, no questions asked, and make you instant title contenders.
It's like a homeless begger in the street, that get's offered a mansion, keys to a phantom, and a weekly stipend in the thousands. How many people in that situation would hesitate before accepting? We're surely not going to start questioning-
"hang on a sec, where is this money coming from? or you an upstanding member of our community? what are your morals and ethics concerning finance and capitol? We'll take the money and go, and maybe, possibly, in the future, we might start to consider where our newfound wealth came from.
So I understand, in this point in time, City fans are just happy to be challenging for trophies, and attracting the top talent. The moral and ethics aspect of the cash influx, the role the club+owners have played in changing the way the game is being played and run, can all wait for another day. As you mentioned in your prior post:
"I was more concerned about what Thaksin did to my club than what he did to Thailand. The problems of Thailand aren't my problems.".
See. I get you. But you're making a mistake by assuming the role reversal would result in the same response and general
laissez-faire attitude from us. We may not have won a league title for decades, but, and as I mentioned earlier, we've still won more trophies in the decades since, than most clubs have won in their history. We're obviously wishing to win more, and the general feeling is we need to be competing for, and winning, the league title for it to be considered a truly successful return. But we're not
starving. We have a winning pedigree, and we've still been filling up the cabinet in the last decade. If I can continue with the above "poor man" analogy, we're upper middle class. Sure we wouldn't say no to an upgrade of our car/house/salary, but it's more a
want as opposed to a
need. We've already had our taste of the dark side courtesy of our previous owners, and we're far more likely to question the moral an ethical aspect that any owner would bring during their ownership.
It's not about us sitting on our high horses smug in our aura of self indulgent moral and ethical views, we're just not in the same situation City fans found themselves in when they were going through their rollercoaster relegation ride. We still believe we can win without bundles of cash flung everywhere in order to entice success. At least, we do for now. Who knows, might our attitude on billionaire owners, whom care little about splashing fortunes on their playthings, change after we've gone 10 years without a trophy? That's up for debate.
But as of this moment, yes, many of us would have a problem with being owned by oil magnates. But the game of football is changing, and slowly so are we.
I don't know what I'd do If We where bought by some Saudi despot. It would genuinely appall me but on the other hand would I walk away from something that has been part of my life for so long or would I come to some sort of compromise separating the football from the ownership situation, because we're used to doing that as football fans. I don't think it's a simple decision and I'd hope that I would walk away but lets not pretend that would be an easy decision for any of us.
Precisely. We can debate long and hard about what might/could/would happen, but at the end of the day, it's only assumptions and theorisations. I'm just thankful we're not in that type of situation where we have to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries in order to placate our success.
But then again, in today's capitalistic environment we may already have been turning a blind eye to such things, whether consciously or unconsciously. (how many people give a second thought about
where their clothes are made, and what are the respective work conditions?)
