“A return of two wins in 11 Premier League games is clearly not in line with the targets that were agreed and set. Sheikh Mansour and the Board felt that there was no evidence that the situation would fundamentally change.I appreciate that I'm a bit behind with this - there were whispers in the 'papers this morning, rumours this afternoon and confirmation this evening. But I didn't want to jump straight in with reaction, given how big this news is. I've thought about this for a while now and I think that it is a preposterous decision. To sack Mark Hughes mid season is destructive and devious. In May it was announced, publicly and unambiguously, that the target for the 2009/10 season was a sixth placed finish. Not only have the board not given Hughes the opportunity to meet that target, they have sacked him when he was on course to do so. Yes, two wins in eleven is not good enough. But we are currently in possession of sixth place. And six points from fourth with a game in hand. And in a League Cup semi final. I've found the last few months as frustrating as anyone but there is something quite underhand about not even allowing the manager to complete a pre-agreed probation period. It was the same with Thaksin: he told Eriksson that top ten was the target, we finished ninth, but he sacked Sven anyway. It's a very bad way of doing things.
So that, in brief, is why I think it was wrong to sack him in December. The one possible justification for doing so would be if we had a window of opportunity to bring in a genuinely top bracket manager - a Guus Hiddink or a José Mourinho. In such a circumstance I could better stomach this sacking. But we haven't replaced him with Hiddink or Mourinho, we've gone for Roberto Mancini. This is a man who has been out of work for the past eighteen months and has no other job offers on the horizon. He's not exactly in a rush. There is no doubt that if we wanted Mancini to take over for the 2010/11 season he would be keen to do so. So the decision to go for Mancini presented no good reason for sacking Hughes half way through this season.
I'll blog about this more tomorrow but I basically think that Roberto Mancini is a bad choice. He won three titles in a not very competitive Serie A, but has no Premier League experience. Yes, he could be a José Mourinho. But to me he looks more like a Juande Ramos. As I wrote above, I would have been disappointed to have lost Hughes for Mourinho today. And I would have been underwhelmed to lose Hughes for Mancini next summer. But to sack Hughes in mid-season to replace him with a man with a decent CV and time on his hands? It stinks.
People have often said recently that Manchester City have sold our soul to the money men, that we are not what we once are. I don't agree with it because it ignores the role of the fans. But today it was proven totally wrong: we're the same fucking shambles we've always been.
11 comments:
I despise the 'lack of Premiership experience' card. This leaves about 2 candidates in the entire world if that's what we're going on. Know who else wasn't Premiership experienced? Ancelotti, Mourinho, hell Arsene Wenger came from the Japanese League.
Whether it was right to sack Hughes or not is a seperate argument, but I'd reserve judgement on if Mancini was the right hire or not.
"That left a humiliated Mancini, for once abandoned by fortune's kiss, with four years left to run on his contract. The €16m wrangle, which meant Mancini was unemployable by any other club, was settled only seven weeks ago, with the coach reportedly settling for a "measly" €5m payoff."
Long time reader, first time commenting. Distress is my first thought, endless managers, which players will fall out of favor, and then which will have to come in. I liked Hughes, the draws were tough, but the old city 6 of the 8 draws would have been losses. I think we progressed but sadly those in charge thought not enough.
Hughes was a good Manager, but tactically naive to say the least. He did a lot of good work at City (particularly behind the scenes), but he was never going to be the right man for the job in this instance.
I'm not saying Mancini will be the right one either at the moment (that still remains Mourinho's title!), but I hope he proves to be the case - we all want City to succeed!
Neither Hiddink, nor "the special one" are available at the moment, but the Sheikh clearly didn't want Hughes to spend even more of his money in the next transfer window, so someone else had to come in.
What I would say on Mancini is that (as I just found out) he hasn't been unemployed because no-one else wanted him, but because he was tied up in a legal wrangle involving compensation with Inter Milan. He couldn't work for anyone else until the case was settled, which was only 7 weeks ago! Plus of course he was way too expensive for many other clubs to handle anyway.
The real questions we should be concerning ourselves with over the next few weeks are:
1) Will the existing squad offer their support to the new Manager?
2) How many of those players will still be in the squad and the team after January?
3) Who will Mancini be bringing in to strengthen the squad in the transfer window?
If the answers to these questions are as we hope they should be then we won't just be pushing for a Champions League spot, we will be pushing for the Title itself!
The King is dead .... long live the King! Onwards and upwards my friends.
Never mind targets, City were not improving, they were losing ground in terms of performances and points. Hughes had 18 months to show he was capable of taking City to the very top of football and he never once looked capable of producing a team with the consistency to challenge in the league.
Sven managed to produce a better run in terms of performances and results than Hughes ever did despite having £250 million to spend on the squad.
Hughes got what he deserved, the sack, for not being up to the job at hand. He was not capable of turning City into one of the best sides in Europe. He had to go.
I was delighted with the appointment of Hughes who i felt was a manager who would help the club to grow and who would grow with the club. It seemed to me that he had acheived success against the odds with Wales and Blackburn and that he had proved adept in the transfer market. I think at the time we were lucky to get him.
I'm sure he has changed areas of the club for the better and i believe he would have proved to be a good manager for us if we had needed him to do for us the type of job he did for Blackburn. In fact, over a sustained period i think he would probably have done better for us than he did at Blackburn as he had an excellent crop of Academy players to draw on.
The problem for Hughes has been that the level of investment has brought with it a level of expectation that he hasn't been able to live up to.
Also, there have been worrying stories about his aloofness and arrogance and i have always been disturbed about his part in what has happened with Jim Cassell.
We can overlook these sorts of concerns when the team is performing well but the simple fact is that we haven't been playing well. Fans have been critical of the likes of Bridge and Lescott but the way we played at Spurs shows that there is something much more fundamentally wrong with the club than a few underperforming players.
I'm not happy that it has come to this because i would love to see some stability at the club and i had hoped that in Hughes we had found a manager who could provide it. I also agree that this sort of upheaval would be easier to justify if we were brnging in somebody of indisputable quality like Hiddinck.
Unfortunately, i think the job we hired Hughes to perform disappeared when the Abu Dhabi Royal Family invested in the club.
The Chairman said in his statement that there was no evidence that the level of performance was about to improve and i think he is right.
From where i've been sitting, it's not about 4th place or 6th place or if we feel we have a chance of acheiving certain targets. It's about being outplayed by some pretty ordinary teams who seem to have more about them than we have.
We could wait until the end of the season to do what needs to be done, but if the decision has been made then why delay the inevitable? In fact, prolonged speculation about a successor would have continued to undermine Hughes and there is an obvious problem for the owners as the January transfer window approaches
if the Manager no longer has the confidence of the Board.
Sadly, i think this decision is the correct one and i wish Hughes well.
I don't know much about Mancini but i think the next few months are going to be very interesting.
Yay,
Maybe Mancini can teach set piece marking.
The defensive disarray is patent. Its a tactical embarrassment of reactive football that has only festered as the season wore on.
Organization and shape are obviously not MH's strength.
obvious move
It sickens me to see all these City fans crying about Hughes, there was no way on earth he was the man for City and this is the best thing City have ever done.
As far as im concerned, Mancini has been drafted in to get us into 3rd gear and if he fails to impress then our owners will get Hiddink or Mourinho.
Hiddink and Mourinho are currently not available until next season.
Get behind the club and stop whining or jump ship like the rags did with FC United.
'He was not capable of turning City into one of the best sides in Europe, he had to go.'
Gav, can you realistically do that in 18 months?
"Yes, two wins in eleven is not good enough."
That's as maybe, but out of those eleven matches, only one match was lost - at Spurs, where we rarely pick up a point let alone win.
I completely disagree with Gav's comment that the team was not progressing. Match for match, bar Hull and Burnley, City had improved on last season's results.
The managerialist language of "targets not being met" displays to me that Garry Cooke and Khaldoun al-Mubarak have little understanding of management in a sporting context. To use terms like targets and key performanace indicators is, quite frankly, ludicrous. OK when you are selling shoes for a living Mr. Cooke but when dealing with sports performances, completely out of context where player injuries, lack of form and "just can't be arsedness" - yes you Robinho, are the order of the day.
I'm really angry that the board have reverted to a Swales-type sack the manager when things aren't going your way mentality. What the board fail to realise is that they have now set a precedent - Mancini cannot afford to lose more than two matches for the rest of the season.
I have watched this lot for longer than many readers of this excellent blog have been alive (first visit to Maine Road Blackpool cup replay January 1966 - won 3-1 - Pardoe, Heslop and Young I think). I have sadly come to the conclusion that what I want is not for them to be ethical, or popular, or interesting, or true to their or any one else's traditions, or even to "play good football"; what I want is for them to win football matches. Not much else matters. This means, over 90-odd minutes, scoring more goals than the opposition; not the same number of goals - more goals. But how many games this season have we felt, say 30 minutes in or even 60 minutes in, that victory was secure and it was just a case of how many we'd win by. I'll tell you - none. At 2-0 yesterday we all knew what was going to happen. I don't know much about Mancini - though I hope we don't replace "Blue Moon" with "Moon River" - but if he wins a few games he'll do for me.
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