While Manchester City supporters have been dreaming of global stars gracing the Eastlands' pitch in the near future, the Abu Dhabi United Group (Adug) responsible for the explosion of fantasy football at the club may have more realistic ambitions.

A £210m (Dh1.3bn) deal to secure the Premier League side was announced last Monday as the transfer window drew to a close, with the new investors – fronted by Dr Sulaiman Al Fahim – promising to make a further £252m available to attract the world's best talent.

Their objective is for City to become "bigger than both Real Madrid and Manchester United" with Champions League qualification already a target for this season.

The grandiose plans seem a little extravagant considering the Spanish and English champions occupy the top two places in the 2008 Deloitte Football Money List – and are the only two to have ever held first place since the report's inception 11 years ago. But, according to a leading football finance expert, Adug's vast resources mean the claim may not be as hollow as first thought.

"In terms of their financial situation, clearly they could be bigger than those two clubs," says Professor Chris Brady, Dean of the Business School at Bournemouth University. "Anybody can be as big as Real Madrid or Manchester United if they choose to be, yet perhaps only in terms of financial backing.

"What they obviously can't do is develop a history or a tradition overnight, and they can't suddenly increase the local fanbase to generate the 75,000 or 80,000 that United and Real fill every week. So they've got issues there, but if the question is 'can money buy virtually anything in football over a period of time?' then the answer is probably 'yes'. Chelsea came from virtually nowhere in 2003 with a substantial influx of money, proving that with money anything is possible."

Roman Abramovich, the Russian billionaire, has ploughed £578m into Chelsea and seen the Stamford Bridge club rise to the top echelons of the game since bankrolling them five years ago.

Skepticism surrounded the 41-year-old's takeover, but Brady believes significant investment in the Premier League will prove beneficial to the competition.

"When Abramovich came in, everybody said it would kill the Premier League," he says. "But what it did was raise the bar and other billionaires – including the Al Nahyan family behind the Adug – have come in to challenge him. "What we'll have in 10 or 15 years is something similar to the NHL, where all the clubs are owned by billionaires and are still making money. There is virtually an inexhaustible supply of these people that want to break into football because the one thing you can never get away from is that football's the world's game."

If football is the world's game, then the Premier League is its hub. Out of the top 20 clubs in Deloitte's Money List, six play in the English top flight and representatives from one country, England, hold three of the top five places for the first time ever. Television revenue is vital to their dominance, currently at an all-time high as a result of the Premier League signing new three-year broadcast contracts – implemented last month – worth a combined £2.7bn.

More than 1,670 hours of coverage is watched by an average of 80 million viewers in 200 countries, and Brady admits he is not surprised the Adug sought to get involved with the moneymaking machine.

"The Premier League is absolutely the place to be in football, 100 per cent," he explains. "Twenty years ago it was Italy, but it wasn't managed well while the Premier League has got it perfectly right. As a supporter it's great. There's something to read about on and off the field everyday and if you're a fan or a player where else would you want to be? Therefore it makes sense for the Abu Dhabi company to want to tap into that.

"Oil-producing states need to diversify their wealth and the guys behind Adug will be aware of that. If you look at Oman, they're expected to run out of oil in as little as 25 years and the other states expect to run down their reserves within 50 years, so cover their options.

"Someone will always buy a football club so it's an asset that you can always realise at some stage down the line," syas Brady.

"I don't ever see the TV money decreasing as football is a key driver of TV packages and will continue to be. It gives you access to global markets so companies can use their other businesses to cross-sell and cross-advertise." Another Abu Dhabi government investment vehicle has recently announced a joint venture with General Electric and purchased a 12 per cent stake in Ferrari in a bid to expand their wealth. Another company, part-owned by the government, bought a stake in North Sea oilfields from Shell and Exxon Mobil. Brady says buying a Premier League club was a natural progression and feels Manchester City offer plenty of potential. "City have a fantastically stable fanbase where, even if you're flirting with success, you're going to have a very solid revenue stream. The new CEO [Garry Cook, formerly of Nike] and Mark Hughes [the manager] are good people so you've not got to invest in recruitment. So it looks like they'll hit the ground running.

"And I think having Manchester United in close proximity will provide something to strive towards," he adds. "City might be able to sustain sharing a relatively small city in world terms with their neighbours.

"The matchday revenue is only one third of overall income so a whole lot of other stuff comes into play, making catching United or Real Madrid a very viable proposition."

With the takeover expected to be formally completed next week, City, who sit 28th in Deloitte's list with a yearly revenue of £85m, should not have to wait long to gatecrash the party at the top of world football.

Al Fahim, no stranger to drama and hyperbole, may just have a point.



DIC's proposed takeover of Liverpool

Football finance expert Chris Brady believes the Abu Dhabi United Group's takeover at Manchester City will not affect Dubai International Capital's designs of completing a similar deal with league rivals Liverpool.

The investment arm of the emirate's government was thought to be close to a $450m deal last March, only for Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr, the club's current owners, to refuse to sell the club at the last minute. "I don't think it'll make any difference," says Brady. "The impression I get is that DIC are still interested, they're just waiting for some movement and then something will happen. I don't think they've lost interest, but if they have then the Man. City takeover could reignite that.

"The City deal will probably just reaffirm in their minds that they're doing the right thing. And it might generate some competition as rivalry between the two cities comes into play.

"Yet what they could do is move for a different club if Liverpool continue to prolong things. I wouldn't be surprised if someone from DIC called Liverpool and said 'right, it's put up or shut up'. And if Liverpool don't play ball they might decide to look elsewhere. So it might push them into moving a bit quicker than they would have wanted to."

Brady feels DIC could compete with Adug.

"DIC could rival them, most definitely," he explains. "If you've got X billion, and somebody else has X plus Y billion that's not going to make much difference. It's the billion you need.

"Nobody's going to pay £10bn for a player so anything that's in the millions, be it £50m or 100m, is not going to make much difference, so they could certainly compete."