Bruce: Cash will give City platform for title push

Mar 14 2010 by James Hunter, Sunday Sun

STEVE BRUCE feels Manchester City’s new-found riches will transform their battle for local pride with neighbours United into a Premier League power struggle.

After decades of living in the shadow of the Reds, City’s new owner Sheikh Mansour has adopted a ‘money no object’ approach in football’s ultimate case of keeping up with the Jones’s.

The Abu Dhabi billionaire has pumped in hundreds of millions of pounds over the last two years to get City into a position to challenge United and the rest of the Premier League’s Big Four, and there are no signs that their spending is slowing down.

Because City – who take on Bruce’s Sunderland side at the Stadium of Light this afternoon – have set their sights on leapfrogging Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea and displacing United at the pinnacle of the English game.

Former United defender Bruce won titles and silverware galore at Old Trafford in the 1990s when City were a million miles away from from competing for honours.

But Mansour’s billions have changed all that, just as Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich’s roubles turned Chelsea from also-rans into challengers when he took over seven years ago.

“I don’t think anyone at Manchester United would have expected City to be challenging them in the near future, but then the new owners came in at City and suddenly it’s all changed,” said the Sunderland boss.

“Having said that, I suppose you could say the same about Chelsea – they never looked likely to challenge Man U until Roman Abramovich put money into them.

“But Man City have always been a big club in their own right and a fantastically well-supported club.

“It can’t have been easy for them to live in the shadow of Manchester United for so long. Can you imagine, your neighbours across the city are winning everything in sight for 20 years?

“But now they have made huge strides in a short space of time because of their sheer wealth and they will have to be considered title contenders next season and beyond.”

While City have made the vastly expensive leap from a mid-table side to Champions League hopefuls, Sunderland are looking to make a step up of their own.

The Black Cats’ own billionaire owner, Ellis Short, has injected £77m into the club over the last 18 months to help Sunderland establish themselves as a top-flight side and - soon - a top-10 side.

Like Mansour at City and now Abramovich at Chelsea, Short has capitalised the debt – meaning, in effect, he has given it to the club rather than lent it, and so cannot ask for it back at a later date.

As a result, Sunderland are in a far stronger position than the likes of crisis-club Portsmouth, who came unstuck when loans were called in.

Bruce said: “We are very fortunate here that Ellis Short has put his money into the club and it is not a loan – he has proved he is not just here for the short-term.

“Because it is all very well people putting big money into a club, but what happens if those owners get fed up and want to pull their money out and move on?

“Ellis has proved his commitment to the club and that he is here for the long haul.

“He has made sure the club is in a good financial situation whatever happens in the future.”

Sunderland come face-to-face with City’s star-studded side this afternoon, but the Black Cats have already shown they can live with the big boys this season, having beaten Arsenal and Liverpool on Wearside.

Sunderland’s mid-season slump – which saw them go 14 league games without a win before that run came to an end with a 4-0 victory against Bolton last week – has made those early-season successes seem a distant memory.

But Bruce is keen to prove that those results were no fluke. He said: “We want to prove that beating Arsenal and Liverpool up here was not a flash in the pan. Only Chelsea and Aston Villa have beaten us on our own patch.

“At home we’ve been very, very decent. I just hope we play like we did against Bolton the other night.

“Against Bolton we had six or seven players who were playing right at their maximum. And the ones who weren’t right at their maximum were just underneath it.”

Sunderland will certainly have to be at their best again today.

But a win against super-rich City would show that money isn’t everything.