After several days of seeing the smiling Manchester City faces plastered all over the TV, the haters have started to bite back. It seems that some have reservations about the oil-dripping Arabs who have moved into Eastlands, despite overtones from Mark Hughes, Robinho and Dr. Sulaiman al-Fahim to the contrary.

While to many it may sound like sour grapes, according to the scribes, money cannot buy team spirit and accordingly Manchester United’s dominance is likely to remain intact for the forseeable future over their neighbours.

The first personality to lay out the pitfalls of the Abu Dhabi United Group’s takeover was David Westley from ArabaianBusiness.com, the source credited with breaking the news of the acquisition on Monday. Westley adopts the “money can’t buy you love” argument, as his warns City to be wary of the green-eyed monster.

Westley: “Team spirit comes from a confidence in the future. For the players presently occupying the City of Manchester Stadium there may be no tomorrow… in spite of Al Fahim’s pledge to build a dream team of a ‘minimum’ of 18 players, Mark Hughes, the current manager of Manchester City, needs to somehow motivate his current squad who presumably have now woken up to the fact that they will no longer have a job in three months time. That’s a disaster for the manager, Hughes, now landed with the new impossible job of English football: building a winning team from demotivated players, in the face of a wave of heightened expectation. With no confidence in the future, there can be no team spirit. With no team spirit, lose hope in Man City’s journeymen getting much breathing space from the bottom of the Premiership.”

Wesley goes further to lay out the dangers for Sparky himself: “If he has any chance of staying in charge of one of the most exciting times at Manchester City, he needs results… Hughes himself must be looking at the likes of Jose Mourinho and Avram Grant, who in spite of bringing back glory to Stamford Bridge, still found themselves surplus to requirements when the highest targets alluded them in spite of a bulging cheque book.”

The second line of attack on the new-found riches in Manchester comes from Eurosport’s Jim White, who tries to put City firmly in there place up when matched up against their rivals, United.

White: “The big question is whether the new owners – who appear to know nothing about football, but plenty about celebrity – will leave him to get on with the job. Though he is remaining publicly upbeat, privately Hughes may already be somewhat perturbed by the buying policy of his masters. The scattergun purchase of marquee names may not help him progress the club. It doesn’t get you a team. In fact, it might do the opposite. Robinho will shift a few replica shirts, but he is a known flake, who Real Madrid were pleased to let go because of the disruption he caused in the dressing room.”

“But even if City are projected by all this cash into a trophy winning position, the ambition that they will seriously challenge United in scale is an unlikely one. 15 years of hegemony built on 50 years of history is not easily shifted. You only have to go to Spain or Italy and hear the local commentators refer to United by the simple shorthand of Manchester to realise quite how far City have to travel to become recognised internationally. Sure, United underestimate the new City at their peril. But right now, they can rest easy in their beds.”