The rest of English football might think ManU is "due a little spell in the gutter, after 20 years up there in the stars, but there is still a shock to be felt from examining the current team," according to Paul Hayward of the London TELEGRAPH. For ManU's dominance to "stall is fine." For "it to disappear is not." The "vast financial firepower built up by the rampant commercialism of the Glazers exerts a powerful logic in favour of eventual recovery." Most of all, ManU "started to look like a deal-making factory with a football team attached, rather than a football team so good that sponsors are desperate to hook their cause to the wagon." This "is the critical point." However many potato snack partnerships the club signs in Asia or Africa, ManU has "to be a football club first and a commercial juggernaut second." But "what if the second inevitably destroys the first?" Well, "it seems not to have done at Barcelona, Real Madrid or Bayern Munich, who are almost equally acquisitive." During "two and a half seasons of drift the rest of the division has not stood still." Man City has "taken aggressive strides to corner the youth market," while spending £50M ($74.2M) on both Kevin de Bruyne and Raheem Sterling. Arsenal has regained some of its old strength, Spurs "have shot up under Mauricio Pochettino and the Premier League's middle-classes have scouted well while paying more to retain some of their best players" (TELEGRAPH, 12/29).
