DarrenInChester

Hello Melbourne Fans. Another Manchester City supporter (40 years standing) wishing to contribute to your debate about the take over. I think the one thing you can be pretty confident about is things will improve on the playing side. The other big positive is that they are extremely professional and will be looking at ways to improve the match day experience in all sorts of ways, in doing so they hope you won't mind spending a bit more along the way. They aren't rip-off merchants that are just going to put the prices up as much as possible, in fact Man City is still one of the cheapest places to see a football match in the Premier League. They have been good judges of what prices they can charge for instance in Saturdays FA cup match entry is £15 for adults and kids for £1. This is against lower league opposition normally its about £40 but Manchester is not the richest city in the UK and they seem to recognise that and price accordingly. They will get extra money through providing more services like food and merchandise. I think there are downsides, supporters of other teams will envy your clubs luck in getting rich owners and there will be much bitterness from them. The other thing that will be a downside to some of you will be that the Arabs certainly have big plans to expand the franchise and I don't see how they can do that unless you become like one of those companies that retains its name but the parent company is always mentioned. Having said that I think you can see with NYCFC that they are quite sensitive to local sentiment and the last thing they would want is for there to be open problems with the fans/local because as far as I can figure it out the main benefit of their investment has been a massive awareness of all thing Abu Dhabi. I don't know what they will do about your colours etc, it would certainly be a sore point if they had tried to change from light blue and white in Manchester. All I can suggest there is maybe Red and Black stripes is Manchester City's traditional away strip in fact they wore it when they lifted the FA cup in 1968, perhaps that would work. I think I am right in saying that the then City coach Malcolm Allison insisted on adopting the colours of AC Milan for the second strip. Anyway enjoy the ride