Dr Sulaiman Al Fahim was eyeing a real estate deal in Costa Rica. His problem was nobody there had heard of him, or his company, Hydra Properties. A chess champion, Al Fahim quickly thought several moves ahead. He found out the favourite football club of the local landowner and, a phone call and a barrel of petro-dollars later, became its sponsor. By the time he set foot in the country he and Hydra were famous. The deal was a cinch. Football is just another bullet in the charm offensive Al Fahim is launching upon a yielding world.

Now Al Fahim, reality television star, Hollywood hobnobber, has done it again. Until six days ago the “Big Al” in English football was Alan Shearer; all of a sudden it's a 31-year-old Emirati whose knowledge of the game is based largely on a crash-course of studying DVDs. When Al Fahim finally arrives in Manchester on Thursday or Friday (his travel plans are not finalised), nearly two weeks after fronting the buyout of Manchester City by Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), he will do so as a celebrity. Robinho dreamed that on Saturday he would be taking the field with Chelsea, only not as their opponent and for a side who last won a league title when his own mother was five years old.

It cost a British record £32.4m to effect Robinho's whirlwind transfer from Real Madrid on deadline day, but every five hours Abu Dhabi pumps oil that generates the same amount in surplus revenue, and the £200m paid to acquire City from Thaksin Shinawatra was considered so trifling that an agreement was struck without the precaution of inspecting City’s accounts within 13 hours of Al Fahim meeting Shinawatra’s representatives at the Emirates

Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi on Sunday. The money was simply wired from reserves made available to Al Fahim by his backer, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, brother of the ruler of Abu Dhabi.

In the few hours remaining before the transfer window closed, after quickly consulting the City manager Mark Hughes, Al Fahim made inquiries about buying Fernando Torres, David Villa, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Dimitar Berbatov. Wayne Rooney, it is believed, was also on his shopping list.

He intends making £260m available for City to spend on new players over two years. It seems there is not a box so big that Al Fahim can’t think outside it and this, and his talent for publicity, plus his acumen, is what led Sheikh Mansour to put the American-educated whizzkid in charge of his football project. Its core aim is to raise the profile of Abu Dhabi and Al Fahim is being feted in the emirate for achieving this in a single swoop. What comes next will be a concentrated drive to build on the PR by making City the world’s top club.

“The idea is to do something that’s a brilliant challenge, to take a club from No 10 to No 1 and all the time put Abu Dhabi on the map," said Anil Bhoyrul, a journalist close to Al Fahim who broke the story on the Arabian Business website.

Sheikh Mansour, a champion horseman, also owns Al Jazeera, a football club in the United Arab Emirates league who have just bid £10m for Brazilian striker Rafael Sobis. He will fund Manchester City from his personal fortune, which runs to several billion pounds, and has access to the further riches of Abu Dhabi's incalculable state wealth. Al Fahim is his favourite business lieutenant and has been given his head to run City. A comparison is found at Tottenham, whose chairman, Daniel Levy, is backed by a billionaire patron, Joe Lewis.

“A PR disaster. The Robinho deal and those other bids have raised expectations unrealistically. The last thing new owners want is to present themselves as reckless fools,” said a source at one of the Premier League’s Big Four clubs, who ADUG hope to replace with a Big One. Al Fahim has signalled, however, that Robinho was a one-off flourish, and come the January transfer window City will shop from a list dictated solely by Hughes. Nor is £260m over two years a figure plucked from the desert air. It equates almost exactly to Chelsea’s outlay between Roman Abramovich arriving in 2003 and the club becoming English champions in 2005.

Derek Whyte, the former Middlesbrough defender, now fronts a daily football programme for Showtime Arabia, the Dubai-based network that broadcasts the Premier League in the Middle East. “Dr Al Fahim came in to Goals on Monday, where we sift through all the action of the Premier League, and answered a few questions about his ambitions for Man City,” said Whyte. “He is about to transform the whole Premier League with his money. If you think about what happened at Chelsea when Abramovich came along, success is achievable.”

Al Fahim, on behalf of Sheikh Mansour, looked at other options; Arsenal, Newcastle and Liverpool, a target for Dubai's royal family. Arsenal, where the shareholding is spread between rival factions, was seen as a difficult purchase and Newcastle and Liverpool too debt-laden. City were the closest to the model of Chelsea when Abramovich took over — a single share-holder under pressure to sell, somewhere possible to achieve the kudos of turning a middle-ranking club into champions through a new owner’s efforts.

Abramovich, after initially allowing his managers control of transfers, sought to bend policy towards the recruitment of glamorous players and Al Fahim has picked a “Dream Team” for Arabian Business that betrays his similar tastes. Lionel Messi, Cesc Fabregas and Kaka are in the line-up, plus Gigi Buffon, the Juventus goalkeeper for whom City are rumoured to be preparing a January bid, and Cristiano Ronaldo, for whom Al Fahim said he would pay £135m. He also selected Torres with an explanation sure to chill Liverpool supporters: “I tried to buy him once. I hope we will succeed next time.”

A source close to the takeover said: “When Sulaiman talks about paying £135m for Ronaldo I don’t believe he’s silly enough to do so. What he’s really doing is sending a message that he can buy anyone. He’s saying to the megaclubs, ‘Look, if Kaka’s for sale and you bid £80m, we’ll bid £81m’. The Robinho deal \ made exactly that statement.” City’s transfer activities will broaden not only in financial scope.

Under Shinawatra, deals were done using an established chain of operatives including Pini Zahavi, the super-agent, and Kia Joorabchian, the player adviser. But Al Fahim has access to such money that no intermediaries were required to purchase Robinho. The deal was done directly with Real Madrid from a suite at the Emirates Palace Hotel with the assistance of Shinawatra’s aide, Pairoj Piempongsant, a contact of Robinho’s agent Wagner Ribeiro.

In the week two Premier League managers resigned because of owner- interference, Hughes was upbeat about Al Fahim’s transfer pronouncements and talk of Champions League football next season. You don’t look gift a horse in the mouth, especially when its nosebag is stuffed with gold. Hughes, grasping his new masters’ desire for projection, conducted a round of interviews saying City can “be a huge club and if, in the future, that means being bigger than the Big Four then so be it”.

Can he do a Mourinho? His transfer record at Blackburn was impeccable and deals for City, like acquiring Shaun Wright-Phillips for £9m and Vincent Kompany for £6m, look shrewd. Intelligent, fearless and fanatically prepared, Hughes has the tools to play the world transfer market. However, Mourinho could woo foreign signings with the prospect of living in London. Manchester, even Sir Alex Ferguson admits, is a harder sell.

Chelsea began their ascent from a much higher base camp. They were second in the Premier League and Champions League semi-finalists when Mourinho arrived, and had an outstanding core of English talent. For all the talk of Kaka and Messi, top players are generally unwilling to join clubs whose histories are not burnished — as City found when Berbatov rejected them in favour of earning less money but greater esteem at Manchester United. Mourinho got round the problem by signing stars on the up, like Didier Drogba and Michael Essien. Hughes may also target “next-big-things” — perhaps Karim Benzema, Sergio Aguero, and the young Real Madrid defender (and Al Fahim dream team member) Sergio Ramos.

Garry Cook, City’s executive chairman, spent most of the week out of the Abu Dhabi loop, but he is known to have impressed Al Fahim with a document he prepared as part of a prospectus circulated when Shinawatra went to the Middle East to sell his shares. Cook, who was the man behind the attempt to bring Ronaldinho to City, feels the club can leap forward by signing selected “galatico” players but that progress should be underpinned by building on the club’s already outstanding youth policy. Hughes’s task is balancing the development of the likes of Micah Richards and Daniel Sturridge with fantasy football signings.

Al Fahim is also keen on youth development. Hydra Properties are building a youth academy in Abu Dhabi for Inter Milan, and Al Fahim said: “I’m looking at opportunities for UAE football players. They will have a chance to go and train with Manchester City and, if capable, play in the Premier League.”

Are any likely to be good enough? One Gulf football expert said: “The standard in the UAE isn’t great. The one player who stands out is Ismael Mattar, who won the Golden Boot at the world youth championships in 2001. At the time the Arab media was full of stories linking him with AC Milan but nothing happened. He’s decent but I wonder if he’d have the right attitude to succeed in the cut-throat environment of the Premier League. Emirati footballers are used to being mollycoddled.”

Bhoyrul describes Al Fahim as “a down-to-earth guy ordinary fans will like”. A hike in ticket prices at “Middle-Eastlands”, as City’s stadium has been dubbed, is not on the agenda but Al Fahim, whose doctorate is in real estate investment, will look at ways of developing the ground and the surrounding land, both of which are owned by Manchester City Council. He hopes ultimately to increase capacity from 48,000 and the stadium issue will be discussed during his first visit to his new club this week. City only put house-full signs up twice last season, and did not even do so for the Manchester derby, but the Chelsea game on Saturday is already close to selling out.

Al Fahim has had a representative in situ at City since the takeover but it is not thought he will launch a widespread cull of executives and run City with a new Arab team. Taking the mountain to Muhammad is more the Emirati style. “There will be opportunities for Mark Hughes and his team to come to Abu Dhabi,” Al Fahim said.

Harry Philp, a football investments specialist, believes ADUG’s arrival makes the Premier League playing a 39th game abroad more likely. “Manchester City will become the team of Abu Dhabi,” he said. “In the Emirates the Premier League is king and City are a trophy. If you are a sheikh who’s interested in football you are never going to get Wayne Rooney to come and play in your league, so why not buy an English side, sign Wayne Rooney, and make them your Emirate’s team?”

In 2009-10 the Club World Cup will move from Japan to the UAE and, though the Emirati sporting authorities will not comment directly, there are unofficial indications they will bid in opposition to England to host the 2018 World Cup finals.

There has been a sheikh-up in football that not even those at the epicentre comprehend. On Wednesday, after playing for Brazil against Bolivia, British football's new record signing will find himself boarding a private jet leaving Rio de Janiero for Manchester. Of Monday's events the player’s mother said: “I don't think even Robinho knew what was happening.” That went for the rest of us, but in the aftermath it was not hard to grasp football had changed forever.

Key players in the tale of the City

AMANDA STAVELEY A former girlfriend of Prince Andrew, the 35-year-old Cambridge graduate is a partner at PCP Capital, a financial advisory firm, which was involved in the Dubai International Capital bid for Liverpool. Staveley has now emerged as a key figure in the negotiations between Al Fahim and Thaksin Shinawatra's representatives

SHEIKH MANSOUR BIN ZAYED AL NAHYAN Believed to be the main financial backer. The Abu Dhabi royal is married to Sheikha Manal bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, daughter of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, the ruler of neighbouring Dubai, and chairman of Al Jazeera Football Club and the Emirates Horse Racing Authority. The Al Nahyan family fortune is more than £560bn

DR SULAIMAN AL FAHIM Negotiated the deal to buy the club on behalf of the Abu Dhabi United Group. Al Fahim heads up Hydra Properties and has been called the Donald Trump of Abu Dhabi, after his appearances on an Apprentice-style show in the Middle East, in which he tests would-be property developers. He has been photographed with Hollywood stars such as Demi Moore and Leonardo DiCaprio, as well as Greg Norman, below

MARK HUGHES The City boss was playing golf on Monday afternoon, as the deal was being confirmed. Hughes had been appointed less than three months earlier by Thaksin Shinawatra and soon fell out with the Thai over the rumoured sale of players. Has been told by Al Fahim that he will choose the transfer targets