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Manchester City may be spending big but their horizons are limited by status

Man City's spree is aimed at cracking the top four not winning anything outright. Only then can they land world-class players
Carlos Tevez
Mark Hughes and Carlos Tevez pose after the latter signed for Manchester City but the Premier League's big four seem unfazed by the signings piling up at Eastlands. Photograph: Andrew Yates/AFP/Getty Images

How many people thought, on hearing that Manchester City had won the foreign ownership lottery this time last year, that they would spend the following summer doing their best to make Chelsea £50m richer? Or that having spent a year observing the team player that is Robinho at close quarters, they would be rushing out to spend more money on Carlos Tevez and Emmanuel Adebayor?

If paying over the odds for John Terry, plus saving Chelsea several years of his not inconsiderable salary, is City's idea of how to break up the top four's cosy cartel then a lot of hopeful spectators are going to be disappointed. As they might be by Tevez. If the Argentinian's goals really carry City to the title then fine, City will not begrudge paying every penny of Kia Joorabchian's £25m valuation and Manchester United will be left with egg on their face.

When you have unlimited spending power you can take wild gambles like that and perhaps not even worry too much if they fail to come off, yet one cannot help wondering whether City listened too much to the United fans, who ended last season imploring Sir Alex Ferguson to "sign him up", and did not spend long enough pondering why the most successful manager in the business took a good long look at Tevez over the course of two years and ended up unconvinced.

At least if City scoop up Adebayor, they cannot be accused of taking the views of the Arsenal fans into account. Paying around £25m for a player whose performances and attitude were suspect last season is giving another helping hand to a top-four club rather than giving them something to think about. Surely City should have held out for Samuel Eto'o, no matter how complicated, or Luis Fabiano, no matter how expensive.

Signing top players is difficult, no one suggested it was going to be otherwise, though there seems little point in being the richest club in the world if you are going to take no for an answer and turn instead to players who are not quite as outstanding. The point about Eto'o is that he is good and he is available. He wants a move from Barcelona, and while he may not want to move to Manchester, that is where money, persuasion and salesmanship come in.

Eto'o might have been a City player by now had he been wooed half as assiduously as Kaka was last Christmas, when City appeared willing to move heaven and earth for a player who all too plainly had no intention of playing in England and would have been perfectly happy to stay at Milan for the rest of his career.

Perhaps City were wise to curtail their chase of Eto'o once they worked out that he was playing off a range of options with a move to Manchester fairly low on his priority list, yet to the naked eye Adebayor does not appear to have any options and he doesn't really want to play for City either. Just because a player wishes to double his wages does not necessarily mean he will be an asset to a club, for reasons discussed here last week. Unless he is excited by the move, keen to prove his worth and improve himself as a player, all sorts of things can go wrong.

Chelsea are not standing in Terry's way. They have said they want to keep him, but have not said, possibly to Terry's disappointment, that they will never sell him at any price or promised to match any stupid wage offers he receives from clubs with stupid money to throw around. Terry is 29 this year, not as sprightly as he once was, and Chelsea, models of rationality and financial prudence when set against City, know they are not going to be snowed under by gargantuan offers for their captain.

A number of people got in touch last week to make the point that City are not doing anything wrong and are perfectly entitled to try to sign any player they wish, that they should not sit back and let the top four have everything their own way, and that it is about time someone new shook up the old order a little bit. It is hard to disagree with any of these sentiments, yet football is never quite that simple.

Certainly City can try for any player they wish, though given their relatively lowly status they should not be too surprised if their targets prefer more established destinations. Then they can try throwing money at the problem, but they will find Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo still going to the Bernabéu while City themselves attract Gareth Barry and Tevez. Given that Barcelona are European champions and Real Madrid are entering a new galácticos era, it hardly seems to matter at the moment what City do with all their money, especially the way they have been spending it. Terry or no Terry.

The club's Arab owners bought in at a time when, rightly or wrongly, the Premier League was perceived to be the centre of the footballing world, the place where all the players and all the money resided. The big league. Now that is no longer the case. Within a couple of months at the end of last season, the two Spanish giants deprived the English champions of their European title and their most iconic player. Ferguson has just admitted he turned to Michael Owen on a free when he discovered he could not compete with Real Madrid for Karim Benzema. This is at Manchester United, who have won the last three English titles, not Manchester City, who are still waiting to place their first order for Brasso in 30 years.

That could change this season. City do appear to be building a team capable of achieving something, though apart from the reliably irascible Rafael Benítez, none of the top-four managers seem unduly concerned by project Eastlands. If City want to double Tevez's wages, or Terry's or Adebayor's, then it's their lookout. No one else suffers. Far from terrorising the top four, City's fabulous wealth has so far merely provided a safety net for their cast-offs and senior servants. Twice the wages and about half the pressure. Given that Liverpool are skint and United servicing a massive debt, what is keeping City from tabling a massive offer for Fernando Torres or Wayne Rooney? Do they not fancy upsetting the neighbours, or are they waiting until the pair are almost 30?

A personal theory, for what it is worth, is that City know they have to be in the Champions League before they can begin throwing their money at truly elite players. And their current spending spree is because they realise they really ought to accomplish that this season, when they have no other distractions. Playing in the Europa League the season after would not only be a huge disappointment, it would materially affect Champions League qualification. Hence the current bulking up. Can City win the league this season? The bookies are offering 16-1, so probably not. Can they crack the top four? Yes they can. In fact they must. They will never have a better chance.

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