On the Thursday, Manchester City were in Midtjylland. By Sunday, they were in Sunderland. Twenty-four hours later, it's fair to say this famous old club were in dreamland.

The 2008-09 season was already in full swing when Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi chose City to be the beneficiaries of his fabulous wealth. His takeover on Monday, September 1 was to transform the face of English football.

It's understood the Sheikh had considered Arsenal, Tottenham, Newcastle and West Ham to launch his ambitious Premier League project. City's long lease on what was then Eastlands Stadium and the ability to develop the land around it made them an attractive opposition, but he was also persuaded that this was a sleeping giant with a strong fanbase.

Robinho joined Mark Hughes' Manchester City on deadline day in September 2008

The Brazilian helped to kick-start City's new era by swapping Real Madrid for Manchester City

Not for the first time in their history, City were in a spot of bother. Thaksin Shinawatra's assets had been frozen in Thailand and former chairman John Wardle had to step in to pay the wages in August.

When City flew to Denmark to face Midtjylland in the old UEFA Cup, the mood among staff was one of despondency. Thaksin was expected to implement cost-cutting measures and jobs were in jeopardy.

When they returned two days later, spirits were considerably higher and it had very little to do with a penalty shootout win over the Danish minnows. Word had filtered down from chief executive Garry Cook that new investment was on the way. Even then, nobody ever expected it to happen so quickly.

That Friday, one national newspaper received a call from a Danish journalist. He had heard that City were preparing a bid for Dimitar Berbatov, the Tottenham striker being strongly linked with Manchester United. The story was swiftly dismissed and the phone went down.

When City won 3-0 at Sunderland on the Sunday, manager Mark Hughes confirmed that defender Vedran Corluka could be sold before the transfer deadline 24 hours later. A couple of loan deals were also possible, but otherwise it was going to be a quiet day in the blue half of Manchester.

Communications staff were told to take Monday off, meaning club journalist Tim Oscroft was the only one on duty when the phone rang early that morning.

'We used to call it The Batphone because that's the one the press always rang,' recalls Oscroft. 'It was an agency reporter and he said, 'We've heard City have been taken over by the Abu Dhabi royal family and we'd like a comment'.'

Oscroft put in a call to his bosses and discovered that a memorandum of understanding had indeed been signed and takeover talks were underway. Within an hour, there was a statement on the club website.

'At one point Mark Hughes was being interviewed by Sky on the golf course and even he seemed to be wrong-footed,' says Oscroft.

'As the day unfolded it was clear it was happening because there was talk about potential transfers. The three I was told to prepare for were Robinho, Berbatov and Mario Gomez.

'Late in the evening, people were walking around with faxes. Someone was holding the Robinho fax and looking wide-eyed at the figure. At 11.55pm, or maybe even later than that, I got the thumbs up to press the button. I said, "are you absolutely sure?" It was all quite surreal.'

Hughes was asked to list his preferences from a very different shopping list to the one he had been working with up to that point. Klaas-Jan Huntelaar was another big name on it. Hughes put Berbatov ahead of Robinho but City knew how difficult it would be to snatch the Bulgarian star from under United's noses with just hours of the transfer window remaining. Sir Alex Ferguson turned up at Manchester airport to greet Berbatov in person just in case his rivals tried anything.

Sulaiman Al-Fahim, the self-appointed spokesman for the new owners who was quickly ditched for making brash claims in those chaotic first few days, was already talking about a £135m bid for United star Cristiano Ronaldo in the January transfer window.

'United locked Berbatov in a room, didn't they, and wouldn't let him out until he signed!' says City's long-serving club secretary Bernard Halford, now a life president. 'United felt they had to have him and unfortunately they were able to talk him into it. But then you get one and you think, "he's better than yours anyway."'

City focussed on Robinho and Halford was the man who faxed the £32m offer to Real Madrid. 'You're pinching yourself because I'm a City fan who's come off the Kippax as a kid,' adds Halford.

Manchester City fans showed their support to the club's new owner after landing Robinho

'The signing of Robinho really put the marker in the sand for the fans and everybody as to where the cub could potentially go. For Manchester City to pay £32m for a player was not only unheard of, it was unthought of. The fans would have expected to build a whole team for that, not buy one player.

'The memory of that will stick in my mind forever. It was like the birth, and things were going to happen. You just wanted a team. But it was more than that. It's a bit like an empire.

'The one thing I remember is the transfer deadline time was midnight, and at 11.50pm I'm sending all the papers through to the League and the FA – contracts, registration forms and everything – and the fans are driving round the stadium outside beeping their horns.'

Some were wearing Arab headwear and the Sky Sports cameras were there to capture the moment. People at City compared it to the madness of election night.

Vincent Kompany, a £6m signing from SV Hamburg a week earlier, was watching it unfold on television. 'There was an announcement made mixed into deadline day on Sky Sports,' recalls Kompany. 'Next thing you know, we were buying Robinho.

'When you've just signed for a club it's the furthest thing from your mind. We had a lot of staff members from Thailand. They were all the ones who welcomed me when I signed for the club. From one day to the other, they were all gone and Robinho was in the dressing-room. That's when you realised things were changing.

'We went away for international games after the takeover and everything changed within two weeks,' says Kompany who was surprised to find that one of the two toilet cubicles at the club's Carrington training ground was minus a door. 'It was like those shows where they're building stuff and next thing there's a reveal.

'We came back and the standard was set. It was like, 'we're going to ask a lot from you, so before you come back with any excuses we're going to make sure we do our part'.

'I remember having a discussion and saying a coffee machine would do well in the training ground. Everyone was like, 'no, in England we drink tea'. I was like, 'ok, I was just saying that I think coffee works as well'.

'Next thing you know, after the international break we had this massive coffee machine come in from Nespresso. I think it was being used that much it needed to go in for maintenance after two weeks. I said, 'I told you coffee does well!''

The working conditions also changed overnight for groundsman Lee Jackson, a lifelong City fan, whose job suddenly got a whole lot easier.

'We were virtually penniless that morning,' says Jackson. 'If you wanted marking paint, you had to beg to get it even though you needed it for the game.

'You would be stood at the door with the purchase order in your hand and you would go into the room, almost snatch the paint and do a runner. It was that sort of financial level.

'I thought we were on the verge of bankruptcy, not doing what we did. You certainly left by 4pm in the afternoon with a very different perception of where we were from eight or nine hours earlier. It was shocking, but in a great way.

Dimitar Berbatov looked destined to be heading to City before Sir Alex Ferguson got involved

'One of the maintenance guys came and stuck his head in the office door and said, 'have you seen the television? We've bid £30m for Berbatov!'. It was probably my least productive day work wise. I remember going home and watching it in disbelief.

'At 7pm, suddenly in the evening it said that Man City officials were in Madrid to speak to Robinho. Who's this person? I was quickly on Wikipedia seeing who it was. 'The fact that he had '-inho' on the end of his name meant that he sounded a bit exotic.

'You didn't know whether to laugh or cry because as a City fan for well over 30 years I had seen so many false dawns.'

Kevin Parker, general secretary of Manchester City Supporters' Club, is familiar with that feeling too. Until September 1, 2008, City fans had learned to expect the worst.

'I've cried many a time over City but usually when they've got relegated or sold someone – Rodney Marsh was the first time for me,' says Parker.

'I can still remember that first morning when everything happened, being in the office at work and the phone starting to go crazy. I came down to the stadium in the afternoon and did loads of interviews.

'I know it sounds crazy but before the takeover I was thinking it would be nice to get to a semi-final to play at Wembley. You would have taken that 10 years ago.

'As fantastic as the Robinho thing was, we all thought it was just a statement of intent. You never knew whether there was any real money going to be available. Very quickly it became obvious that there were some fantastic intentions from the owner and look around us now.

'It's been an incredible 10 years. If someone whisked the rug from under our feet today, we'd take that.'