[iadom]

Playing devils advocate here but I wonder if anyone has compiled the attendance and performance stats of the Greater Manchester area teams since the oil money poured into Man City. In all the years of United’s dominance of the PL all of the other local teams enjoyed success of varying degrees. Blackburn, Bolton, Oldham Athletic, Wigan, Bury, Rochdale, Stockport County, even Man City had several ups and downs in that time . Five of those teams including City all tasted PL football during that period and all appeared to at least maintain their fan base. The first of those teams to fall out of the league where Stockport County and it’s well known that a large part of City’s fan base is from Stockport. Now Bury have gone with Bolton staring over the edge and Oldham Athletic hanging on by their finger nails.

I have absolutely no idea if the stats support my hypothesis but it makes me wonder.