Rant: Why Players Got Their Heads Turned by Manchester City 16 August, 2009

Regardless of what those players said, i do not believe that City will be challenging for the title or even a Champions League placing for the next two years. They will more likely be jostling with Everton, Villa and Spurs for Europa League qualification.

Of course, it is the higher wages that Manchester City are willing to offer, or at least in part because of that. But this has already been talked about to death. My take is that the wages they get are not just simply higher (in the sense of maybe £5,000 or £10,000 more). No. What these players are getting is equivalent to what top players in top teams are being paid.

Make no mistake. Barry, Tevez, Toure, Adebayor and Lescott are very good players. Barry and Lescott were one of the best players for Villa and Everton respectively last season, Tevez was an important player in Manchester United's past two successful campaigns, and Adebayor was second top goalscorer for Arsenal last season (and their top scorer the season before).

But they are not top players. Simply put, Barry is no Alonso, Tevez is not as good as Rooney, Adebayor is not in the same class as Eto'o, and Terry is a better player than either Toure or Lescott.

And yet, what these players are being paid (or will be paid, in the case of Lescott) at City, are probably in the same bracket as what Alonso, Rooney, Eto'o and Terry are being paid at Real Madrid, Manchester United, Inter and Chelsea respectively.

That is also probably why City have failed to attract players like Terry and Eto'o (though they did come a bit close with Terry). Yes, Terry and Eto'o would probably have been paid even higher at City, but they are alredy recognised as two of the top players in the world, and it is considerably harder to lure them with just higher wages alone (similar reasons to why they failed with Kaka previously).