The age of the MCO: Michael Edwards' Liverpool return shows FSG plan, and the Manchester City 'feeder club' that never was

Liverpool owners Fenway Sports Group are the latest to pursue a multi-club strategy

John Henry and Michael Edwards

Back in 1996, Manchester City Football Club looked very different from the one that exists today.

Last season, Pep Guardiola’s City claimed a remarkable treble, winning the Champions League for the first time, the Premier League, and the FA Cup. The same could be achieved again this season come the end of May.

Since the takeover of the club by United Arab Emirates royalty in Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan’s City Football Group in 2008, the club has been transformed to emerge from the shadow of its neighbours Manchester United to become the dominant force in not only the city but the English game.

A club that now sees revenues of £713m, the highest in English football, and profits of £80.4m, also boasts a network of 12 football clubs around the world that the owners have significant stakes in, with City Football Group having become the most prominent multi-club ownership group in global football.

The 1996 version of Manchester City was somewhat different.

The summer of 1996 saw City, then in the surrounds of a Maine Road home that needed updating, preparing for life in Football League First Division having fallen through the Premier League’s relegation trapdoor at the end of the 1995/96 season.

Then chairman, the late Francis Lee, had been in talks with a number of potential suitors over a potential takeover deal of the debt-laden club, with rumoured bidders including a Saudi prince, Norwegian fish food and shipping magnates, and even long-time Wigan Athletic owner Dave Whelan, who denied the links.

But one person who was in the frame was Manchester property developer Mark Guterman, the owner of Third Division Chester City, the team this scribe has followed since the age of four.

Guterman was understood to be fronting the bid for a wider consortium, but one of the key aspects of this particular proposal was that the consortium wanted to bring Chester City into the fold, for it to act as a feeder club to Manchester City.