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Can money buy success?

Never mind fossil-fuel oligarchs or US food magnates. The big money has finally arrived in English football. And it's arrived, oddly enough, at Manchester City. On Monday the club announced it had been bought by a United Arab Emirates consortium fronted by Sulaiman al-Fahim, friend of Leonardo DiCaprio and a man who is apparently 10 times richer than Roman Abramovich.

Afroth with ambition, the new owners have already promised to win the Premier League, the Champions League and probably the Glenrothes by-election too. City, without a major trophy since 1976, now appear poised on the verge of unceasing global domination. Can this really be right?

History suggests it might be. This is football, where the rule that you don't solve a problem by throwing money at it simply doesn't apply. This hasn't always been the case. Famously, Celtic became European champions in 1967 with a team of players all born within 30 miles of Glasgow.

In the years since, the professional game has consistently rebutted the notion that success can be built, crafted or coerced out of anything other than a significant heft in the transfer market. The modern billionaire-owner era has been like a hot-housed experiment in the transformational power of hard cash. Under Abramovich Chelsea spent £150m on players and abruptly won the league for the first time in 50 years. Manchester United (valued at just over £900m), Arsenal (£600m) and Chelsea (£384m) are among the top eight richest clubs in the world. Between them they've won the last 13 Premier League titles.

Exciting times, then, for the newly minted richest football club in the world, but are they really happy? City fans are already planning a gala day of mass headscarf-wearing at their next home game. Happy isn't quite the word. Delirious, perhaps.

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