Recent events have highlighted the best and the worst of the private ownership divide that now dominates the English Premier League.
On the one hand Manchester City - the lovable losers of English Football whose last trophy was way back in 1976 - are suddenly dreaming of ending the dominance of the England's big four of their fierce local rivals Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal.
And on the other hand West Ham and Newcastle - which like Man City are traditionally big clubs that have fallen further and further behind the big four as the years progress - have just had a reminder of how wealthy private ownership is not all it's cracked up to be.
First Manchester City - the club which has just been bought by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan - the brother of the ruler of Dubai in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates and a man whose wealth even dwarves that of Chelsea's mega-rich Russian owner Roman Abramovich.
Abramovich of course has single-handedly bankrolled Chelsea into one of England's and Europe's top clubs - without a care in the world for the bottom line - as the Blues ended a 50 year title drought by winning the EPL crown in 2005 and 2006 before finishing runner-up to United for the past two seasons as well as finishing runner-up again to United in the European Champions' League last season.
Chelsea showed that with enough money - and most importantly with the right manager in the since-departed Jose Mourinho - that any club could take on and indeed defeat the traditional three powerhouses of English football in Liverpool, United and Arsenal.
Now Man City is set to follow that blueprint and have already secured Brazilian superstar Robinho for a British record transfer fee of £32.5million or nearly $A70 million from Real Madrid.
And now City is throwing unheard of sums at players such as United's superstar winger Cristiano Ronaldo and former United striker Ruud Van Nistelrooy.
The fact that City were even able to outbid mega-rich Chelsea for Robinho signals a major power switch in the EPL and sends a strong message to the big four that they may no longer be able to take their places in the top four each season - which guarantees them the continual riches that come with participation in the Champions' League which in turn keeps them ahead of their less well-heeled rivals - for granted.
But what kind of message does it send to the other 80 odd clubs that make up England's four division professional structure that the only way of breaking into the big four is to have one of the world's richest men take over the club.
However private ownership is certainly not working for all clubs - particularly those whose private owners don't have a bottomless pit of money and actually seek to try to balance the books at some point, as most responsible businesses (as football clearly is these days) have to do.
Newcastle - which like Man City has struggled for decades despite its enormous supporter base - thought they had a winner when wealthy sports store owner and life-long fan Mike Ashley took over the club.
And his stocks only rose when one of his first actions was to dump Sam Allardyce as manager and replace him with Newcastle hero Kevin Keegan.
But now less