I must admit, I have a grudging respect for Manchester City over the last six months or so.

They have been bought out by a bunch of Arabs so rich that they make Abramovich look skint but they are trying, trying to play on roughly the same playing field as everyone else.

They apparently offered £100 million for Kaka earlier this year and offered him a salary that would buy him every bible in the world but something “weird” happened… he turned it down!

Over the last couple of days, the news that Eto’o was about to become their next major signing has reached fever pitch.

To Man City’s credit, they have at least been on the mental side of sensible with their offer of £25 Million for a 28 year old striker with behavioural problems but their reported offer of a salary of £250,000/week has sort of blown any credibility on that front out of the window but still, I must respect them.

Why?

Because, let’s face it, when your owner is worth more than most smaller countries, it would be a right laugh to just offer £100 million here there and everywhere for all the best players and offer them £1 Million/week wages.

It would make for a brilliant experiment.

Let me just think here, with my calculator at the ready…

23 players… £100 million each = £2.3 Billion

Wages over 1 year = £52 Million x 23 = £1,196,000,000.

We’ll just forget the wages for the second year which would be just over £1 billion again.

So, this little ruse would cost around £3.5 Billion which is little more than the owners of Man City earn just for getting out of bed in the morning for a year and represents less than 10% of their wealth.

But somehow, despite having more money than any one person could ever hope to spend in a lifetime, they have somehow resisted the temptation to press ahead with this ridiculous scenario. And here lies my respect.

Funnily enough, so have the players.

Kaka turned them down and all the signs suggest that Eto’o looks like doing the same.

Moral of this story: Money doesn’t guarantee success.