The Manchester City Society II

Was wondering if we had one of these somewhere. Yes but not used for a while. The OP is a veritable time capsule!

You do wonder what Man City can do to grow their fan base. They might be getting some more new sponsors (ignoring the dodgy Abu Dhabi fake funded sponsorships) but they've had tons of success over a decade and their fan base is still non-existant.

If their success was organic like United, Arsenal or Liverpool were in the past then they would get a bigger following but it's more difficult to buy in to a club which relies on handouts from oligarchs/arab states owners. Apart from De Bruyne, they never did really have a popular player that attracted fans, Chelsea atleast had players with global appeal like Drogba to attract fanbases from Africa but Man City don't really have a player of that popularity.

Chelsea also continued to buy star names (even if they failed) from Crespo, Shevchenko, Torres etc.

Man City no doubt buy good/great players who become better but none were big names before coming.

Haaland is probably the first big name they've signed in years. Even Grealish wasn't that big outside of England.

Which is why I was surprised they didn't push harder to sign one of Messi or C.Ronaldo when they had the chance.

I'd say early on with Tevez Toure and Aguero. But outside of that cannot think of many.

Agree with Tevez as was big coup to get instead of Man Utd. Yaya Toure was a big name for Barcelona and had won a lot.

Not sure so much about Aguero. Similarly David Silva, where both were touted as becoming the next big thing but it's not like they were a star until they moved to Man City.

I guess Haaland is similar to them in that regard but his profile is already bigger than what Aguero/Silva were when transferred.

Yeah Aguero I think is getting into FM territory. Though we all know about his partnership with Forlan at the time.

Agüero scored 184 goals in 275 premier league matches. That is stunning and just amazing. I don't think that Haaland breaks it. I have a sharp tongue and say that he will not even be close.

If Haaland stays with Man City for 10 years (like Aguero did) then I'd expect him to break that record. But very few players stay at a club that long these days.

Your last sentence nails it. Either he gets even better as football player - what highly likely means that he moves to the next club to get paid a higher wage - or he is injured most of the time and can't play for City. Haaland is a player with potential to world class, but also a risk because of his injuries.

Man City are one of the highest paying clubs in the world - where else is he moving? Maybe only PSG and Real Madrid would be crazy enough (in the longer term) to offer bigger wages.

I'm not aware of any increased risk of injury to Haaland? Don't think he's had issues before. He has two athlete parents (Alf was footballer, mother was heptathlon athlete) so he will be more aware than most of the risks of injury.

He does get injured (not significant ones) on a fairly regular basis https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/erling-haaland/verletzungen/spieler/418560

I think that’s mainly to do with his sheer size and the way he plays the game, as opposed to being made of glass.

Edit: looking at the number of games missed over the last 3 seasons, it has gone up each year which is interesting.