HUGHES TO SMASH PAY BARRIER
City ready for world's first £500,000-a-week player
MANCHESTER CITY will embark on a new era of frenzied spending by bringing the world's first £500,000-a-week player into football.
The kind of cash now being made available by the Abu Dhabi United Group to City boss Mark Hughes will smash through established pay structures and take them into a new stratosphere.
While Hughes has been trying to dampen down the hype created by this week's takeover, the Arab group led by Dr Sulaiman Al Fahim has been whipping up the fervour behind the scenes.
Al Fahim has been telling club insiders that City will shake the football world in a frantic spell of spending that will leave the rest trailing behind them.
Fortune
"Bigger than both Real Madrid and Manchester United" is the boast of the man said to be in charge of a group-wide fortune estimated at £500billion.
Al Fahim is the frontman for the takeover and will be the very public face of the club - but the power behind City will be Sheikh Mansoor bin Zayed.
Although well known in his homeland as the favoured brother of the ruler of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mansoor will remain in the background and travel to England only for selected Premier League and FA Cup matches.
He was not part of the delegation which arrived at Eastlands this week but it is his determination to build City into a dominant global brand that has been the driving force for the £200m takeover.
City's hierarchy has been made aware Sheikh Mansoor will NEVER settle for second best. The only way to insure against that is with hard cash - and there is plenty of that on offer.
Promises
ADUG have already shown they do not deal in hollow promises. Within hours of announcing their City takeover they were preparing to break the British transfer record by signing Robinho from Real Madrid for £32.5m on reported wages of £160,000 a week.
But that is only a taste of what is to come and the idea of a £500,000-a-week payslip for the right player has already been discussed in the Eastlands inner sanctum.
A City insider revealed: "The manager and the new owners aren't so naive to think all of the top players want to just come to Manchester City to wear the blue shirt - not yet, anyway.
"But, just like Chelsea have demonstrated in the past, we've been told they are prepared to back up transfer market spending power with wages which can't really be matched anywhere else in world football.
"If it takes £25m a year to entice the best player in the world, they will not hesitate."
Glamour
By earmarking players like Liverpool skipper Steven Gerrard and Chelsea's midfield driving force Michael Essien, boss Hughes has shown his hand so far as his plans for City are concerned.
He will refuse to be wooed by talk of the glamour signings.
He wants to deal in players with pedigree and a proven ability to deliver results.
There is only one reason that kind of performer will be enticed to Eastlands - the temptation of a bulging wage packet which will blow their existing contracts out of the water.
Chelsea did it on the back of Roman Abramovich's wealth. And while City are starting from further back in the field, the fortune on offer from ADUG makes the Russian oil magnate's investment look like loose change.
Even players such as Gerrard and Essien, as committed as they are to their respective clubs, would have their heads turned by such mindboggling pay deals.
And once City snare one or two big signings of that type, the queue of top names wanting to join the Blue revolution will stretch around the globe.
Our City source said: "These people are going to set new ground rules as far as football finance is concerned. It is an obvious thing to say but money will be no object.
Pressure
"But it won't be uncontrolled and they will expect a return on their investment in the form of success in the Premier League and Champions League.
"Second won't be good enough and that increases the pressure on everyone to deliver results.
"The Big Four clubs might think they are in a comfort zone but they will be shifting nervously in their seats if this City grand plan materialises - and no one doubts that it will."
Another significant outlay promised by City's new owners is a whopping £110m to buy their Eastlands home outright, which could then be re-named the Hydra Stadium after the company Al Fahim runs in the United Arab Emirates.
The Arabs have also set aside a further £50m for increasing the stadium's capacity to close the gap on their rivals United at Old Trafford.
Value
Early talks have already been started by the ADUG and we understand they will offer Manchester City Council chiefs, the principal owners of the stadium, full market value for the venue.
The Abu Dhabi moneymen already feel the current 47,500 capacity is too small to accommodate their grand plans.
City currently average around 42,000 fans but are believed to have sold an additional 2,500 season tickets since Brazilian star Robinho was signed on transfer deadline day last Monday.
The new owners plan to commission some of the world's leading architects to propose ideas which would incorporate the current design and take capacity to just over 60,000.
Our City insider said: "It is not just the stadium the new owners are interested in - they already think it is a fantastic arena in every sense of the word.
"They just think it would be better to own the stadium outright and for it to join their unrivalled real-estate portfolio.
"They firmly believe the current capacity won't be big enough in a very short space of time."
