Premiership Sheikh-up - Arsenal looking isolated

There was a time when Robinho was the hottest prospect in football. Clubs were tracking him but only the biggest of the biggest clubs were present at the bidding table. Real Madrid got the player as expected because such a talent only goes to great clubs. At the same time, Kevin Keegan was about to be replaced as manager of Manchester City, a regular mid-table club with no mass international appeal.

In August 2008, Robinho is now an established player who has proven his potential is real and is getting to the age where the best is expected to start coming. Manchester City is still a regular mid-table team in spite of brief show-biz flirts with Sven Göran-Eriksson and a politician in exile. Now a Sheikh's financial instrument - Abu Dhabi United Group - takes over Manchester City and Robinho is going to wear a blue shirt to play in front of an old fan who's supported City for all his life and who would not quite be able to believe what he's seeing as Robinho runs around wearing his team colours into the path of Joey Barton.

This is not our first Sheikh. There is Sheikh Abrahamovic, Sheikh Glazer, Sheikhs Hicks and Gillett, etc. And there are yet more Sheikhs waiting in the wings. There is Sheikh Usmanov and now apparently Sheikh Mohammed.

In reference to rumoured interest of Dubai International Capital in Liverpool, one website wrote: "Sheikh Mohammed - Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, seventh richest man in the world and perhaps the answer to Liverpool's prayers."

Are fans really going home at night praying for sugar daddies? I can understand walking home from a defeat at Fulham and thinking, "I wish a billionaire could just buy us Essien for £100m – no balancing of the books, just 'here-is-a-£100 million change, just go get him'." But I really know inside me that that's the last thing I want for football.

This take-over of Manchester City tells me that the pattern is now firmly established. It tells me that the financiers have watched the sport (the business side of it) and decided that there a good business. If you are a billionaire who wants status and certainly exclusivity (which is what billionaires resort to when they can afford everything else), then you can get it in football club while having a good business if need the money or a reasonable cost if you don't need the money. If you are a business man who wants a money-spinning entertainment business with stars who can be as big as holiday's B and C lists then football is attractive. There is now clearer proof of the link between money and success. If you spend the same as Manchester United with a good coach, you can beat them. Chelsea have proven that!

Imagine this: you are billionaire from a small Russian town or an extremely wealthy Sheikh from Dubai, but you can command from one town in a great Western country, the love and adulation from a lot of the young menfolk (fans) and automatically become one of the most important people of a city. It's nearly as good as an electorate – you can be more powerful than the MP. You can be one of the most important people in old and important towns like London, Manchester or Liverpool in a heartbeat.

Football is has a long history with politics, power and control. You can read Franklin Foer's book called "Football Explains the World" to find out just how football has been used by people seeking power and in conflicts and politics for decades.

The very people "answering our prayers" to win games and earn bragging rights for a year over our opponents might end-up taking the game away from us. There are many sports whose games you go to, especially in the US where sport has been seen as money-making entertainment business rather than an artistic and creative discipline, and you find a stale atmosphere completely devoid of soul. It becomes a day out for beers and popcorn. In the end, people care so little that they only turn up for spectacle events – only games between giants. The rest is just a tourist attraction and dumbed down popular entertainment.

It has become so difficult to win the Premiership without investing hundreds of millions that the poorer teams are becoming pawns that are there to make the race interesting rather than take part. Very soon, the only thing that will make sense is an international Super League. That's one negative view of the future.

Maybe someone has a better view of equalised competition as more people invest in teams to make them competitive and eventually create an exciting league where 10 teams are capable of winning. If such a future is what we will get then okay, but what's going to happen when a Sheikh invests £500 million and doesn't win anything in 5 years? Will he invest more and raise the stakes until it bursts or will he walk away and leave a club that has forgotten how to balance the books and collapses?

I'm open-minded about club ownership – afterall most clubs are owned by someone or a small group of people and one could say it is a bit prejudiced to consider an English gent to be okay and an Arab billionaire not okay. Indeed we have to be careful not to be simply xenophobic or being old-fashioned and unnecessarily suspicious of outsiders. That is why it is important to keep an open mind. I, however, am maybe not clever enough or positive enough to see the upside to this.

Arsenal now stands as the one big club not owned by some billionaire or some private financier with an eye on global profiteering. I'm not sure how to categorise our owners – they are certainly not ordinary folks like you nor I either. Wenger's philosophy suits (or is designed to support) this prudent and conservative bunch.

For years we have seen Wenger as the man showing the way for the future – youth, style, stability and balanced books. Yet the past 10 years has seen the growth of win at all cost, buy to win, buy the best players for your squad, don't throw points to blood young players, debt is no problem, money is no issue, etc.

Wenger's and Arsenal's trend is against the grain. After the purchase of Manchester City and Robinho, I am now wondering whether Arsenal is showing the way to the future or if they are living in the past – against the reality of money equals success. In 5 years the bubble might bust like the dot-com bubble and Wenger and Arsenal will stand proud and stable as other clubs fall around them. In 5 years maybe there will be better competitiveness in a league and different kind of global football entertainment with maybe a super league of which Arsenal is not part due to having fallen behind by not spending.

Wenger made a revealing comment talking about Barry: "These older players you pay a lot but can get nothing in return." He was referring to the resale value. A young player has resale value because there is still potential and time on their side. They cost less because the potential is not proven. But older players have no resale value. They are expensive because you already know what they can do – it's not just about potential.

But it seems either Wenger or Arsenal or both cannot spend a Dollar (or Pound) without the thought of what they could get back in hard cash rather than what total value he can add on the pitch. Maybe they don't want to finance their opponents by giving them money to buy key players instead of them taking the money from opponents for a player they grew. Wenger once said that for a player to be worth £40 million then he has to score every time he touches the ball. The Sheikhs don't see it that way. With that view, there are no players worth £40 million to Wenger and you can begin to understand why he will not even spend £20 million on a player since he probably expects someone who will guarantee a win every time he starts. It makes it even more amazing that he went up to £14 million for Alonso – he must have really wanted him!

I have always said that the team needs a defensive midfielder but that we can still aim for the league and Europe with what we have got and hope injury luck is on our side. I still believe that.