American pragmatism, or diabolical miscalculations. How Manchester United lost the title of the best club in England to City

Manchester United said goodbye to De Gea And Jones. Manchester City released Gundogan and Mehndi and close to saying goodbye to Walker. If the transfer of the latter to Bayern takes place, perhaps the difference in the cost of the compositions of the two Manchester clubs, which now stands at 400 million euros – 1.2 billion versus 0.8 billion, will decrease somewhat. In the meantime, the Devils are seriously losing to their neighbors. Both on the field and off it.

“Manchester thanks you, Sheikh Mansour” – until recently, such a banner was one of the hallmarks of the Etihad Stadium. It is not difficult to understand the club’s employees and, let’s say, the fans of the Citizens – it was with the arrival of the sheikh and his money that Manchester City turned into one of the best clubs in the world. Both in terms of results, and in terms of infrastructure and organization of doing business, eclipsing their neighbors from United, who, before the appearance of Mansour in English football, were considered almost a role model.

It is noteworthy that Mansour acquired Manchester City just three years after the arrival of the Glazer family to Manchester United. Despite the huge gap in the financial capacity of the owners of the two Manchester clubs – the Glazers are estimated to be worth around three billion dollars, Mansour – about 30 billion, the gap in the football opportunities of the two clubs did not look catastrophic at first.

Moreover, already in the time of Mansour, Manchester United won three league titles in the Premier League. The last one is in the 2012/2013 season. Moreover, then the composition of the Devils was estimated cheaper than the roster of the Citizens.

But then the situation began to change not in favor of the Devils. Manchester United was still trying to stay in the “arms race” started by City and even won it once – in the 2014/2015 season, but later began to lose catastrophically. In the 2019/2020 season, the difference in the cost of the squads of the two clubs was almost twofold.

Of course, money alone does not play football, and it would be foolish to underestimate the merit of Guardiola and the players, so we simply state the fact: since the 2014/2015 season, Manchester United has not won a single league title, Manchester City has won the Premier League five times in this period .