Khaldoon al Mubarak interview
The City chairman spoke to Chris Bailey in a video interview on the official site. Whilst the questions were hardly challenging, it was still interesting to hear Khaldoon al Mubarak speaking of Sheik Mansour’s ambitions for the club.
The chairman was clearly unperturbed by criticism of the club’s “acquisition strategy” during the last two transfer windows, choosing to believe the club has invested wisely and that would be borne out with future success.
A determination to make this “project” successful kept coming through, and there was a clear faith in the “leadership team” of Garry Cook and Mark Hughes.
On City’s critics:
“There will always be critics and I know that will only increase.”
“With the ambition we have and what we have committed to the club there will be more criticism.
“It is frustrating but it will only be there because of our success.
“It doesn’t faze anyone here. We are looking forward to proving we can do it the right way.”
On the new signings:
“Every one of the players we have brought in is an outstanding individual and an outstanding talent.
“Garry, Mark, myself, Brian Marwood and the rest of the team have worked very hard in identifying the right targets.”
“Every addition fits exactly with what we had in mind.”
Whether we have value for money is considered “subjective” with the chairman repeating Hughes’ example of Carlos Tevez being of greater value to us at the moment than he was to United.
Possibly the most poignant statement was on the ambition to become one of the biggest clubs around:
“We are trying to build a club to be one of the best in Europe.
“You will not reach the top echelon of European football by not investing. That’s the reality of the business today.”
In his criticism of the Kaka bid, Michel Platini suggested we should try and produce our own version of the Brazilian maestro from local boys in our Academy. Sadly this is guff, as no academy in the world is going to produce a whole team to compete with the moneyed clubs at the top of the European tree.
Worse, a good academy at a club without the finance to hang on to it’s promising youngsters will simply be plundered by others. West Ham have a history of seeing their talent move on to win trophies elsewhere. More recently, Leeds have seen numerous teenagers plucked by Premier League clubs since their financial collapse.
Thankfully, the ambition as well as the money we have from Sheik Mansour enables us to be better placed to retain youngsters as well as make headline signings.
Watching this interview, there can be little doubt that the future has never been brighter for City fans.