By David Hamill

After the capture of Carlos Tevez from Manchester United and the possible swoop for Arsenal’s Emmanuel Adebayor (at the time of writing the Togo striker is reportedly in talks about a move) one of two things will happen to Manchester City.

They will either march all over anyone who dares get in their way, qualify for the Champions League and then spend enough money to make Real Madrid look like they’re rummaging through the bargain bins in your local Poundland, or they will simply crash and burn and replace Newcastle’s lofty position as the club every neutral fan wants to laugh at.

And since I’m very pessimistic about most clubs’ prospects I’m more inclined to lean towards crashing and burning – for this season at least. The first reason I’m less than optimistic about instant success at Eastlands is because I’m still not convinced that City’s owners, the Abu Dhabi United Group, are 100% behind the team’s manager, Mark Hughes.

His position was shrouded in speculation last season with big names like Jose Mourinho and Jurgen Klinsmann linked to the hot seat and despite shelling out a British record fee on Brazilian Robinho and then spending a further £50m on Nigel de Jong, Craig Bellamy and Shay Given, the team still labored to tenth place in the Premier League, and struggled to overcome opposition like FC Copenhagen and Aalborg in the Uefa Cup.

City showed flashes of brilliance last season but as good as they were going forward they were even worse defensively – they were too open and frail leaving many wondering if Hughes possessed the managerial prowess to set up his team to live with the best.

Perhaps once Hughes gets the chance to reinforce City’s defence and add more steel to midfield, they will eliminate their inconsistency.

But even if they could snare John Terry from Chelsea, like some of their signings it would leave the mark of greed and question where players’ priorities lie. To leave a team that regularly challenges for major honours for a club who are possibly two years away from just competing with the game’s elite would show a really weak mentality.

Lets just say City do finish fourth. There’s no guarantee they would even qualify in an open draw preliminary round for the Champions League and even if they did, setting the group stages alight is by no means a certainty either. And just how patient would their multi-millionaire stars be then?

Would their dummies come out of their prams and demand transfers somewhere else or would player power insist on a change of management? Player anarchy would cause the team to collapse but when a group invests that much money on star attractions, they will probably be more inclined to listen to their highly prized assets over Hughes.

It’s almost like a no-win situation for the former Blackburn Rovers boss – if City are a success everybody will claim it was solely down to their wealth and not the manager, and if they fail then he will be remembered as the man who wasted a massive pool of resources.

And if they end up somewhere in the middle (by teetering on the brink of eclipsing the big four without actually doing so), you get the feeling Hughes’ role will resemble that of a mobster in a gangster flick in which he is given huge sums of money and a wealth of resources to get the job done, only to be constantly looking over his shoulder in fear of being whacked despite the assurances from his bosses that his future is safe.

City have made some excellent signings recently, particularly Tevez and Roque Santa Cruz, but they have missed out on their main targets such as Kaka and Eto’o. It will still take a lot more class, time and patience than perhaps those in City’s hierarchy and in the stands are prepared to offer before the club can wipe the smugness off the big four’s faces.