English Premier League: Money Matters, But How Much?

A lot has been made of the recent takeover of Manchester City by an Arab Group of investors. People who have followed the English Premier League closely over the years, though, know that it is going to be a very difficult task for Mark Hughes to please his new owners.

A huge question mark remains over whether Mark Hughes may have actually remained as Man City's manager had the group taken over the club even a month earlier. They might have even sold a lot of their current squad and brought in a new-look, "fantasy football team."

Let's face it though, Manchester City are as far away from the top-four as they were before the signing of Robinho. By signing the Brazilian for over 30 million pounds, they have broken a couple of records which are only monetary in nature (the highest paid player in the World and the highest British transfer), but that doesn't mean that they're closer to a top four spot.

Robinho has yet again proven himself to be a selfish player who has motives which aren't football related while moving from one football club to another. Why else would you want to move from Real Madrid to Manchester City, when your former employers wanted to keep hold of you?

Robinho is a good player without a doubt. However, is he the player to take Man City to the next level? I'm not so sure. Is Manchester City, as Wanderley Luxemburgo pertinently asked, the club that will take Robinho's career upwards and onwards? We'll find out soon enough.

Let's turn our attention back to Manchester City's owners then. The public figure, who is a very wealthy man, is Dr Sulaiman Al-Fahim. However, the main player is said to be Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the Royal Family of Dubai. They've got a lot of cash to spend, and they seem to be bragging about it.

In all honesty, that's about all they can do with so much cash and owning Manchester City. I'm not sure how many top players would want to go there in the first place. I'm also not sure whether they'll be interested in playing under Mark Hughes. It's all a huge mess as far as I'm concerned.

Money does motivate players to move and even forces clubs to sell. Comparisons have been drawn between Jose Mourinho's Chelsea and Manchester City, but make no mistake - Mourinho built a team, he didn't just buy players. His predecessor, Claudio Ranieri, and his successor, Avram Grant never managed to win a trophy while in-charge.

Money might be enough to buy players, but it certainly isn't enough to build a team. People seem to forget that football is a game played 11 vs. 11 on a pitch. Victory is something which you cannot buy, it is something that you earn. You can write a team off all you want because they might not have the players in terms of quality, but they can spring a surprise.

That's why I feel that the Manchester City experiment is doomed to fail. Their owners seem to think that their club is a machine and that the players are parts of the machine which function to the best of their ability all the time. That's not the case with any football club.

Foreign owners are rash, they might even get hands on with team selection - just ask Hearts fans in Scotland about a certain Lithuanian, Vladimir Romanov, and you'll hear only bad things about the man. They bring in their own people in the now infamous, "Sporting Director" position and make things difficult for managers.

Whether all this will happen to Manchester City is debatable, but there have been only two clubs, in my opinion, to come out on top with foreign ownership - Manchester United and Aston Villa. The other clubs have always had a roller coaster ride on and off the pitch.

After those elaborate and bold statements made by Dr. Sulaiman, I only wonder whether he'll be as good as his word. You can't buy anything and everything with money, and I just hope that good football wins the day because quite frankly, that is the only thing that fans care about.