The Hughes era

And so the Mark Hughes era at MCFC has ended in almost as chaos as it begun. There are no international arrest warrants this time, and quite a bit more money, but the fundamentals are still the same: a rich foreign owner who sets reasonable targets to a manager, but gets carried away and sacks him even though things are going fine. To be honest, it's not quite as bad - I don't fear an imminent Leeds United scenario - unless there is some dramatic political overhaul in Abu Dhabi - but it's quite disconcerting.

It's a useful comparison, because it reminds us of the key fact that haunted Hughes throughout his tenure - that he was Thaksin's man. He was recruited just a few weeks after the 8-1, and was meant, I suppose, to continue Eriksson's gradual progression up the league. (Future books on City are going to have to be very precise about the relationships between Thaskin, Eriksson, Cook, Khaldoon and Hughes.) And so when we were bought by ADUG they inherited Hughes, Cook, Bowen and all those that Thaksin had recruited in that mad summer of 2008. Some of us suspected that the new board would want their own man to spend the money, but they stuck with Hughes. In December 2008 when we were in the relegation zone I feared that they would dismiss Hughes, and bring in their own man to exploit the January transfer window and keep us up. But they stuck with Hughes, backed him with the signings of Bridge, Bellamy, de Jong and Given and we stayed up. And then in May 2009, after we managed only a tenth place finish, I feared that they would sack Hughes and get someone else to spend their money in the summer. But they didn't - they kept him, set new targets and backed him in the transfer market.

But the fact that there were questions about his future every few months showed that he never quite seemed to have the necessary authority. Every time the board backed him it felt only like a stay of execution, the delay of the inevitable. The fact that he was not a big name, that he was British, that he had never won anything, that he bought players like Craig Bellamy and Nigel de Jong all underlined his fundamental nature: an earthy, worldly manager; a manager of superstars, rather than a superstar manager. And it was this discord that cost him in the end - the board thought that we should be higher, closer to the summit and they did not think that Hughes quite had it in him to take us there. Perhaps they did well to trust him as far as they did, it was probably too much for them to trust him to take us all the way.

So how will Hughes be remembered as a City manager? Clearly it is impossible to analyse him independent of the Abu Dhabi story. Of course, much will depend on what happens next. If Mancini succeeds then maybe Hughes' overhaul of the squad, the facilities and the ethos of the football club will be seen to have been crucial. But who is to say that Mancini will even be successful? Ultimately Hughes' story is one of managing the change and turmoil of the early ADUG era, and it can be said that he did quite well but no better. In 2008/09 he got us a tenth placed finish (by no means the best of the decade), but did take us on to a UEFA Cup quarter-final. This year he leaves us in sixth place and in a League Cup semi. We played some nice stuff along the way - we beat Arsenal three times at Eastlands, and produced a few other heroic home performances, beating Hamburg and Chelsea. But it would be wrong to say that there were not as many bad days as good, or that Hughes successfully imposed his own grit and spine onto his Manchester City side. We were only ever a work in progress, and an expensive one too.

But I will be honest here, and say something I never could while he was in charge. I really thought, I believed, that he was the one to take us to the promised land. Having been initially sceptical, I trusted him wholly, and the fact that he was not allowed to see his work through to its conclusion hurts me bitterly. He joins Richard Dunne as those who will have to watch the culmination of their work from afar.