The Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan (not in the photo above) has invested nearly £800m in the club in the past three years.
Manchester City have announced the biggest loss in English football history, £197m for the most recent financial year. The loss on that huge scale, bankrolled by the club's oil-rich owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan during the third year since he bought City in 2008, eclipses the previous biggest loss ever made, £141m by Chelsea in 2005, the second year of their ownership by the oil oligarch Roman Abramovich.
City's loss was made principally by buying players to make Roberto Mancini's squad strong enough to top the Premier League, and paying wages of £174m, £21m higher than the club's entire turnover plus an extraordinary series of player purchases totalling £156.5m.
The same applies to the giants Real Madrid & Chelsea as well as Wanna bees such as Paris St Germain in France, Shaktar in Ukraine & elsewhere.The UEFA financial fair play which will be coming to affect in the next year or so is supposed to force clubs to run an overall surplus in three year terms. But there's already rumours that clubs will try to cover their operating losses by inflating various income sources such as naming rights to stadiums etc in their books.According to Guardian Newspaper Sheik Mansour made it clear when he took over that he would spend the fortunes necessary to make City successful, and since June 2010 he has personally poured a further £291m into the club. Added to the £500m Mansour invested up to May 31 2010, he has now spent an unprecedented £800m on the football club, to bankroll the expenditure on transfer fees and wages the club would otherwise not have been able to afford.
No matter what, the likes of Manchester City, Chelsea & Real Madrid are simply "trophy buying" operations & are contributing to the ever acceleration deterioration of the "beautiful game"!
