And what happens in a few years time? As much as you seem to disagree, football is a business. To sustain the wage bill, City need to become a brand; to market themselves across the world. That's how United have dominated since the early 90s.
With City's current income, they have no way at all to sustain the wage bill they currently have AND spend money on expensive players. Do you think they'd take a pay-cut to stay at Eastlands? We've seen with Chelsea that to keep pace with United and Arsenal you need to spend big every year.
Just because nothing's changed in terms of atmosphere/whatever you're referring to doesn't mean City haven't lost their soul. The last couple of years have seen a huge influx of foreign players into Eastlands. Teams like United & Liverpool attract players not solely because of how much money they're offering, but because of their history, tradition, and the size of the club on the world stage.
City were an average club not fighting for any trophies and hadn't been for 30+ years, which meant they had to offer players enormous amounts of money in order to sign them. Why else would the likes of Tevez, de Jong, Kompany et al. have signed for City? There's no soul or passion there, they're just workers picking up their paycheck every week. If Liverpool had offered those players the same amount of money as City, where do you think they'd be playing now?
For the record, I support my hometown club. I won't name them, but they're absolutely nothing to do with any of the big clubs and sit in the Blue Square Premier League.
