Manchester City are trying to revolutionise football. They make no apology about this and this time - the revolution 'will be televised'.
Like most revolutions, the facts never quite support the propaganda. Manchester City finished in 5th place in the Barclays Premier League in the 2009-2010 season despite having built an enviable squad and deliberately weakened the two teams they had targeted most; Aston Villa and Everton. More of the same underachievement will undoubtedly follow.
Gareth Barry was drafted in to anchor a midfield but more importantly to strip Villa of their iconic leader. The problem was that City found themselves with a slower than average holding player who despite the claims of loyal Villa fans (and the lazy thinking of the England manager), was never likely to trouble the top sides over the course of a season. Barry was not the Roy Keane, the Steven Gerrard or Partrick Vieira who could lead them to the top honours. So keen to address the problem - City bought Vieira.
Almost a decade after dominating English football, Vieira arrived for a farewell tour and delivered nothing in City's futile attempts to get a foothold at the top of the game. He achieved nothing but to improve Barry's reputation in the City midfield. As Thierry Henry departed top level football, abandoning his own attempts to go it alone as a top-level footballer outside the Arsenal bubble, Vieira can cling to his dream and his petro-dollars hoping, like the City fans and owners, that reputations count for everything.
Nevertheless, City achieved an aim. They weakened Aston Villa finished ahead of them. Barry left the World Cup and the stardom he craved with his reputation as a quality holding midfielder in tatters.
Joleon Lescott arrived in Manchester after a non-performance for Everton against Arsenal in which this £24million footballer was at the heart of a six goal battering.
The petulant manner in which Lescott engineered his move away from Everton leaving his former manager and club abandoned at the start of the new season said everything about the motives of the move.
As the joke now goes: "everyone knew Lescott would go on to be an elite player - especially now City have renamed their reserves the 'Elite Squad'."
Lescott was not the best central defender at fifth placed Everton that summer, yet City were willing to take the risk, the logic? More important than signing a decent defender they would also be sufficiently disrupting their better placed rival.
City achieved their aim. The finished above Everton. Joleon Lescott's World Cup dream never got started.
Liverpool's failings and Tottenham Hotspurs' revival took everybody by surprise. It left Citys gameplan looking slightly hollow. Indeed, they decided to tear apart the gameplan mid-season and fired their popular manager Mark Hughes.
Hughes had never looked too comfortable as the voice of the City revolution and his sacking perhaps saved him from losing all his friends in football as his uncomfortably took to the task of unsettling his rivals with his aggressive transfer policy. Hughes would often defend his actions by saying he was leaving it to the 'people who make the decisions'. Eventually he met them himself. A reminder of the famous Ernst Rohm quote that 'all revolutions devour their own children.'
By adding Arsenal and Manchester United reserves, City's squad was set to be a top eight team. It is likely to be that for many years to come.
In 2010 Manchester City have set about targeting the reserves of Barcelona and the Spanish national team. The though process, one would assume, that they will have the stars of Europes's second tier competition.
For all their millions and and big plans Manchester City's "project" (as their excitable corporate people like to call it) has succeeded in very little.
The project has not attracted a star player who the team can revolve around. The stars they attract are very often temperamental or inconsistent at best. Indeed that is how players end up at Manchester City. Real Madrid did not let Robinho leave because they needed the cash. Nor did Carlos Tevez leave Manchester United because they couldn't live without him. The fact that Manchester City's best player is on loan says everything about their plans. There is indeed, no planning.
The most threatening player Manchester City possessed last season was Craig Bellamy, the season before, arguably Stephen Ireland. What part will they play in the new all-star City?
Manchester City is a brand. Unashamedly and quite forcefully this point is made. The trouble with a brand is that like Coca-Cola it needs to be re-branded and re-marketed in order to stay at the top of the game. In football, it is usually that continuity is the key. Continuity doesn't sell. And Manchester City will continue to sell themselves.
I wish them the best of luck.
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