Chelsea, La Liga, Manchester City, South America
Samba Time In Manchester
Chelsea somehow managed to mess-up the signing of Robinho despite their financial clout and Luiz Felipe Scolari's petent desire to bring the Brazilian to Stamford Bridge. With Peter Kenyon criticised, it is Man City's gain and trophies will be on their way argues Bryan Sanchez.
Finally we have reached that time of year when the football transfer window is officially closed until those old winter nights in January, and there can be no doubt as to what the big story of the summer is.
Manchester City brought Robinho to Eastlands with twenty minutes left on the clock courtesy of their new owners the Abu Dhabi United Group, who are said to be worth ten times more than Roman Abramovich. Even so, the accepted price of £32.5m and a reported weekly wage of £92,000 put doubts into Man City supporter’s minds as to whether or not the diminutive Brazilian signed for footballing reasons or for the generous sum of money offered to him. The figures flying around, in this tropical financial climate in football, don’t sound like they would cause Chelsea any problems.
The west London side had the resources for the now departed Andriy Shevchenko a couple of years ago (a whopping £30m for an ageing striker) so you could be forgiven for wondering why they failed to get Robinho to sign on the dotted line. It originally seemed that Chelsea, or any other club for that matter, wouldn’t be able to convince Real into selling the player after Madrid manager Bernd Schuster had reportedly threatened to walk out of the Bernabeu if Robinho was sold behind his back.
A change of heart it seems has allowed the deal to go through; Manchester City aren’t a threat to Real Madrid as they don’t compete in the Champions League, whereas Chelsea do. Peter Kenyon, it seemed, had the deal in the bag with constant sightings with Robinho’s representatives and the player himself declaring that he wanted to go to Chelsea a day before deadline day. To say Chelsea fans are discontented with both the loss of Robinho and Kenyon’s role in the saga would be to utter an understatement.
Madrid have tried to dig their heels in but could not risk keeping an unhappy player who was likely to under perform and who openly stated he would go to into hiding in Brazil if he wasn’t granted permission to leave. Ultimately, selling to Manchester City offered them a terrific financial reward while also irritating Chelsea, who they had accused of poor behaviour in attempting to sign Robinho.
One thing is for sure: Robinho is one of the most gifted footballers in the world. He is exciting, has quick feet, and pulls of the kind of skills that would amaze even Ronaldinho. If you were to Youtube him you would probably be glued to your PC for at least three videos (or hours)!
The Manchester City fans certainly should be excited. The Brazilian trio of Elano, Jo and Robinho brings a South American flavour to the side and along with the likes of Martin Petrov, Micah Richards, and Michael Johnson the blue half of Manchester have something to realistically look forward to…trophies.
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7 comments for “Samba Time In Manchester”
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Dude, Robinho had to leave and Real were waiting for anyone but Chelsea to sign him. Robinho settled for Citie but they don’t have the attractive qualities of Manu, Chlesea, Liverpool or Arsenal to sign bigger names in the future. With teams like the Big Fou offering big contracts, why would any footballer settle for citie.
Moreover, the dubai investors have only one thing on mind: They want to increase the brand name of Citie only to sell it off in the future. All the potential overseas markets have been tapped into by the Big Four and other teams fron La liga and Serie A. They’ll have a tough time trying to go green in the bottomline and it’ll be 3-4 years when the ownership changes hands. Whoever wroth this article needs a reality check
Great fucking article ! COME ON YOU REDS !!!!
If Kenyon was doing his job properly, he would have known that Man City were being brought by the Abu Dhabi United Group. He shouldnt have let SWP leave for such a small amount when such rich people were taking over. We should have got at least £15-£20mil for him.
He also sould have sealed the Robinho deal when Scolari first came and shouldnt have let it drag on this far. If a deal couldnt be done we should have moved on and found someone else.
In my opinion we lost out on Robinho because of Kenyon and he has to go.
Kenyon should go.U are rubbish like a shit.We don’t like u or never trust u again.FUCK YOU ASSHOLE
dis so so bad …1st a take over bid n now got robinho…wat on earth was keyon finking…should he be kicked 2 d curves?wld av gone 4 anoda world class act instead if we knew dis ws gna blow up in our face…i fink we advertised robinho 4 d world 2 be noticed…same as berbatov…do man citie av a mind of their own purchasing a player on anoda clubs radar..money mite nt get trophies now but sure gna end up like leeds if u continuing spending …mister 10 times richer than my mentor(Abram)
I think the writers got a point. Chelsea are a champions league rival to real and real only sold to city because it was the only offer on the table, chelsea lost out on the bidding, regardless whether or not real wanted to sell to chelsea, they didnt offer enough money.
further more SAm after a transfer like this who wants to read about branding, this is football!
i cant wait to see robinho play.
[...] Lucas and Fábio Aurélio impress intermittently for Liverpool; and, of course, Elano and Jô were followed to Eastlands by record-breaker Robinho. Chelsea, who boast Juliano Belletti, Alex, and Brazilian-born Deco amongst their ranks, have even [...]