Kal

International Friendlies should be scrapped completely. Or at least be voluntary for the individual players. It's a waste of time, 100%. No idea why JT, Lamps, and Cole don't just retire and concentrate on the club who pays them.

Grow up. The only reason City are paying as much as they are is due to ridiculous transfer fees paid for by Madrid, Barcelona, ourselves, etc. The advent of the £30m player has now given rise to the £50m+ player. Asking £25m+ for average players when we paid £16m for Crespo and £13m for Cech is just the market. City are foolishly spending on their strikeforce (I agree with you there), and I'm sorry but we did essentially buy the Premiership at first - without Abramovich's investment we would have gone bust and without the injection of talent (which we wouldn't have been able to afford had we not got a sugardaddy) no way in hell would we be the force we are today. We've forged a fantastic team with major financial investment, and doing it sensibly has allowed us to spend less in recent years. City are doing the same thing, albeit in a less structured way. It's just the truth, deal with it. Oh, and if you think that players such as Essien, Drogba (who repeatedly wanted to move if you remember), Cech, Anelka, Carvalho, A Cole, etc. joined for "love of the club" then you're very much mistaken - they joined to win trophies and for a bumper wage.

Yes, because we were SO different when we got our money... Shevchenko £30m... sold for "free" anyone? Let's not be hypocrites now - we were exactly the same and built a title-winning team with the money.

Suarez