At the start of this month, Cook met Hiddink’s agent, Cees Van Nieuwenhuizen, at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport armed with an offer for the Dutchman to succeed Hughes immediately. Furthermore Cook had arranged for a private jet to be put on standby so that Van Nieuwenhuizen and Hiddink could fly directly to Abu Dhabi to meet City owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan and seal the deal.
Cook’s behaviour shows he went much further than attempting to sound out Hiddink and made a concerted attempt to hire the Russia coach. The Daily Telegraph revealed that City planned to remove Hughes last week and had approached Hiddink before then offering the job to Mancini.
If true, this at least shows that the club considered other options before Roberto Mancini. And, to be honest, I would be much less disappointed with their conduct if they had replaced Hughes with Hiddink. But the question remains: having been rejected by Hiddink, did the club not consider the policy of abandoning their plans to replace Hughes? Sacking Hughes in December was only ever going to be devious and unfair, but if you replace him with Hiddink at least it's a probable improvement. If you're going to be callous at least be calculating too.
2 comments:
A fair point, but consider the other side (don't read this as an anti-Hughes rant, btw, I've been neutral on this issue for a while): if not December, then when? If City waited longer they had two options: sack him before the end of January or effectively have to wait til the end of the season. The games we have coming up are quite easy, but we've thrown it away against Burnley at home and there honestly was nothing about our recent performances to suggest we wouldn't do it again. It's a good period to initiate a manager in now to give him until the end of the month to get himself in the job before the transfer window opens, and the Manchester derby in the cup is coming soon and we all know how much we want cup success. The less time before January 31st, the less time a manager can sort himself out and the more likely that we lose the League Cup semis. If we gave Hughes the entire transfer window, then he might have drastically improved, yes, but if he hadn't and you want rid of him then you're forcing the new manager to use Hughes' squad and that sets us back even further. There's no time better than now to sack Hughes if we weren't going to keep Hughes on until June. The real regrettable part is that the board didn't inform Hughes that his job was in question and went behind his back, but considering everything else they've done right we shouldn't turn our backs on the board right away IMHO.
@Matt
Well thought piece with some very good food for thought. Just two areas of concern.
1. the January window
I'm not sure January is the best time to go into the market as international class players rarely move at this time unless they're unsettled. It also gives players less time to adapt as they would likely thrown into the mix right away whereas the summer affords that bit of extra time. Midseason is also not the ideal time to make wholesale changes.
2.The board's behavior re: Hughes
It sets a bad precedent to future players and potential high profile managers. Managers accept its a result driven field but I doubt right now there are too many manager who are too impressed with how the board conducted themselves on this one. Especialy from a group promoting themselves as businessmen of the highest standards and integrity and we don't look too good in the court of public opinion right now and that owes more to the clubs recent actions more than any anti-City media bias.
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