Good players at this level, but you don’t pick up fans with those names - maybe Cahill excepted.
Good players at this level, but you don’t pick up fans with those names - maybe Cahill excepted.
Yeah @mental, you make a good point but while Cahill was a significant marquee signing, that was orchestrated by the FFA and it happened to be the right fit for city at the time. Fornaroli was an unknown and evolved to marquee status (but anonymous to those outside the A League), McCormack was an injury replacement and Budzinski was simply outside the cap for accounting purposes. To be fair, all of these examples show that they’re willing to spend money, so I give you that, but their primary focus is firmly about developing and fishing for local talent to pass on to the mothership.
Truthfully, for high profile, the only one in that list is Cahill.
The point was that they’ve stumped up for marquees several times in (often quite creative) non-David Villa situations.
City have parted ways with o’halloran
Genuinely forgot he was even there.
This is a great read:
Can’t believe this:
Was coming to post that too. Surprising.
Great news for us in that it means that our wealthyest, and potentially most powerful opponent is hamstringing itself with continued lack of ambition.
Bad news for the league in that its wealthyest, and potentially most powerful club is hamstringing itself with continued lack of ambition.
Another year of beige mediocrity, lots of green seats, and seagulls.
Not that surprising, just further proof they have no interest in winning trophies outside Manchester.
While the City Group is the wealthiest owner - I don’t think Melbourne City is the wealthiest club. By that I mean that they are given a budget and the City Group don’t seem to want to spend more than that.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if the cap were lifted.
Sure, but for them increasing it would be almost like me buying a large coffee instead of regular. They could do it just like that.
If they’re gonna be as tight arsed as this, I’d rather have Heart back - it was a nice logo, a quirky name, and most importantly having both Melbourne clubs wearing blue is a fucking travesty. If the horrid parasites that own the CFG are going to ruin football, I’d rather it tip a fortune into the game here in the process.
I’m with you.
I’m not. Heart was heading the same way as Gold Coast and to have that happen in a city like Melbourne would have been horrible.
Sure they could spend more (but they’ve said they don’t see a return on investment that way). But they’ve saved the club and invested really heavily in facilities and youth development and provided a pathway for Mooy and Arzani (and hopefully a few more) aussie players in Europe.
Their average attendances were:
8,312
9,082
8,860
9,933
Then after City their attendances went up a little bit but now they are back where they were, if not worse. I’m not sure how this is comparable to GCU (a highest average of 5,297) or any other team which has gone bust.
The problem is that having such limited ambition when you’re one of two clubs in one of this country’s only two proper big cities is a real dampener. In this league, the big clubs have to help lift the league by bringing in players who excite fans. If they want to do what they’re doing, they should have shored up a Newcastle or CCM. Having a “global brand” city then theing so subdued about it is a weird situation… unless they are consciously holding abck until the awaited structure changes arrive, though experience in other markets suggests that’s not likely.
All they are currently providing is a dismal decay they are happy to secure for many years to come.
5 years, please. Delay that inevitable climb to the top for as long as possible.
Of course they don’t. Anyone with an interest in Australian football can see that all CFG really want is to find young talent (which is in itself a noble purpose), send them overseas, and sell them on, effectively paying nothing but selling for a high price. That transfer fee they got for Mooy would’ve definitely helped them for FFP that year, for example. Its millions they could spend as a result of that transfer. They’re hoping the same for Arzani. Who knows who the next guy is, but it will be the same for them, too. The chances of them making it to Man City’s first team are virtually zero. In the off-chance they do make it into Man City’s first team, though, they will likely be world-class and re-pay them far more than a transfer fee could, even in this transfer fee-crazy world we live in now.