Manolete's Crazy EPL Rumours for Today (Citeh, 'Pool)

On another note, Barcelonian economist Gay de Liébana halves the shelf life of Spanish football in it's current state, from ten to five years.

That's unfortunate, but makes sense.

We all know Pep is Arsene's replacement.

Might as well throw my hat into the ring.

Pep is going to be the successor of the Red-Faced One.

how is pep's relationship with toure yaya? i think they were on really good terms while yaya was at barca

and didn't man city target biscuits?

Throwing people off the scent, Dandy. Oh yeah, I'm learning English.... NOT! Boom, just learned German. Suck it, media

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LINK

Thought you may enjoy that. Compilation of Kroos against Valencia.

Meh, signings aside that club is revolutionizing the way clubs should be run.

Cool post I read from a City fan a while back (the OP was talking about City's Youtube channel):

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Other Clubs can afford it. It doesn't cost much to have a media department and 99% of all major Clubs already employ somebody to do much of what you see on CityTV.

The difference between them though, is that we had a stone cold genius called Richard Ayers as the Head of Digital and a somewhat remarkable lady called Vicky Kloss as the overall Head of Communications who really drove home that vision.

As the story goes, when the takeover occurred there was a meeting attended by Khaldoon and guys like Garry Cook, Vicky Kloss, our Head of Branding/Marketing and the like to pitch plans about how exactly they could meet the somewhat ambitious growth targets that the Chairman made. One of the key decisions to come out of this meeting was the decision to ignore TV as a way of connecting fans. ChelseaTV, LiverpoolTV, MUTV, RealMadridTV and the like were all available on digital satellite or cable in various territories and after been pioneered by Man United, was seen as the eaiest way to provide media content to fans.

City actually gambled a bit that this was a dying artform and instead of having a full on TV channel, they could instead use the funds to create a website with the same content without having to neogotiate a billion deals with every cable company on the planet. Instead of old school advertising, they threw a lot of stuff at the wall. They created viral marketing campaigns (I think Bellamy's was the first one that I recall), they used various social media outlets, both local and international "guerilla marketing", etc.

MUTV actually makes United quite a bit of money, about £10m a year IIRC (and this is just off memory, don't send me messages). They have a large supporter base to moneterise. City don't have that, so went in the opposite direction. It was also a bit of a conscious thing, to do things differently than other Clubs have done things before; to be leaders on and off the field, an attitude that I'm happy to see continue with the release of the Opta Data recently and the community that has sprung up around that.

City's marketing is actually pretty special. Remember that "Welcome to Manchester" poster? It reportedly cost just £8,000. Eight grand for worldwide media exposure, thousands of column inches and an iconic image that has survived for more than a few years. That's an insane return on the investment.

It's this commitment to been a world class Club rather than just a world class team that makes me so intereted in all of the details of the goings on at City. From the marketing, to the digital, to the Performance Analysis, to the depth and attention to detail of scouting, to the commercial tie ins with EA Sports and FourSquare, to the new Academy project which is touted as the only "6 star" Academy in the world, to the Etihad Campus which rejuvinates a whole area of poverty in Manchester, to the players on the pitch, to the revolutionary groundskeeping technology, the coaches throughout the system, the people working at the stadium, etc. In every single part of the Club, the one thing that has changed as a stark contrast to us pre-takeover is not the money or anything, it's the commitment to absolute excellence that pervades the Club in every single department. It's a wonderful atmosphere; they get the best people in key roles then give them the opportunity to try new things and the funding to make it a reality. It's a Valve-esque attitude of "oh, that's cool, let's do this". The website is a prime example of this. There's been some failures, sure. We had a short lived bit about food and nutrition that tried to blend together cooking programs and football. Against Villareal, we moved the away fans across the stadium in an attempt to join together the two sets of singing fans. We made a bad decision to bid for Kaka and Cook's comments after. We had a pop at the BBC over Dan Roan's reporting of Vieira's comments. We are bound to a pretty poor contract that provides food and drink workers at the bars inside the stadium. There's more that I won't go into.

The point I'm getting at, is that City have an excellent website simply because they have an excellent everything. As City fans, we're almost unanimously agreed with the idea that every single department in the Club has major successes and positives since the takeover and has become better. You don't hear about it for the same reason that I don't know about the plans for West Ham's scouting next year; because I don't support the Club so don't keep abreast of every single tiny development.

As Oasis once said "we'll see things they'll never see". The magnitude of what is happening at City is summed up by the website. Other Clubs either chose a different path or didn't foster the creative atmosphere that City did.

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I've read a lot about the club, and I'm pretty jealous.

Great article. I especially love how they found a way to namedrop oasis in there at the end.