As many as 17 players are thought to be under threat with Michael Ball, Darius Vassell, Danny Mills, Dietmar Hamann, Elano, Jo, Javier Garrido, Kasper Schmeichel, Gelson Fernandes, Felipe Caicedo, Benjani, Glauber Berti and Tal Ben-Haim all now facing the chop.
"In fairness there have been a few signings in the 18 months before I came to City where in-depth background checks weren't carried out," Hughes told the Daily Star.
"In the circumstances the club felt that they needed a big influx of players in a short period of time...
"They [players who are not part of Hughes' plans] might feel it's in their best interests to move on. I would imagine there are situations where I probably agree with them. It's all about making sure the club is stronger."
A cull of most of remaining Eriksson signings and other dead wood is central to the Sparkyisation process. It has to be his squad, not something he's inherited or built upon but absolutely his. And there are too many players at the squad who just don't fit with the Hughes approach. I wrote about this a few months ago - that there are certain sets of players within the squad who cannot be part of the process I latter called Sparkyisation. These are: those Eriksson signings made without sufficient forethought (Elano, Garrido, Gelson, Benjani and maybe Caicedo too), the remnants of the Pearce era who still remind us of darker times and do not have the fitness to play in a Mark Hughes team (Vassell, Ball, Mills and Hamann) and some combination of our four Brazilians. Given what's happening in the first half of the Sunderland game, I wouldn't be too upset if all four of them left.
4 comments:
i enjoy reading your blog but tell me why do you now have ads for russian mail order brides on it?!
Thanks very much. I host adds to earn some money, Google chooses what to put on them though.
eh what did elano do wrong today?
he was again at the heart of everything good today, we lost shape when bojinov went off.
without robinho ...where would we be?
the stats aloen prove it's not lack of effort, just confidence. if sparkyisation is about removing quality which city fans have often been very good at, then i dont want it!
I wrote that just after the Robinho penalty miss.
Without Robinho we may well have won more than one away game this season.
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