Bellamy: 'It's so professional here'

Craig Bellamy was in the papers this week, saying that with the state of his knees he may only have two years left in the game. Worrying news, to be sure, but not a surprise, and not requiring much more comment. What was more interesting was what he said about the atmosphere at City since his arrival:

“Everything at Manchester City has gone well for me from start to finish,” Bellamy said. “It is so professional here. The manager is clever — he doesn’t want to give any of the players reason to moan. He makes sure the only thing you have to concentrate on is football. The last few months have given me a huge sense of pride. I think people have seen what I am as a player now.

“I’ve always got goals, but am I a one goal in two games player? No, I’m not, but my career has been one in three, which isn’t too bad.”

The success of Craig Bellamy at City - our top scorer this season, if you haven't been following - is probably Mark Hughes' greatest achievement as manager so far. Given the opposition to his arrival, given his injury record, given the number of other strikers we signed this summer (three at a total cost of £89m), Bellamy's record is very impressive. Five goals in seven games on arrival, before spending the rest of 2008/09 out injured. And then five goals and three assists so far this season, with all the competition in the squad.

He is quite clearly revelling in the atmosphere of Mark Hughes' Manchester City. This is itself a triumph for the management. Hughes and Bowen's turning the fecklesness and unprofessionalism of the Thaksin/Eriksson era into something a lot more focussed, driven and serious over the last 18 months has been a central narrative in City's recent history, inseparable from the injection of Arab money. And Bellamy's comments are a testament to its success.

David Conn on Sparkyisation

The third and final part of David Conn's 'Inside Manchester City' series came in Sunday's Observer. This article is more football-based, and discusses the changes to the team under Mark Hughes. Back in March I started to use the word Sparkyisation to refer to the process of changing the mess that Hughes inherited into a team built in his image: competitive, physically fit, experienced and burning with a will to win. Of course this started with his first day in the job but the beauty of the ADUG money is that it has given Hughes a free hand to do exactly as he wanted. (It is rare in football that a manager's preferences and intentions are as fully revealed as Hughes' have been over the past year, as every other manager has to measure what he would like up against what he can afford. Hughes' unique position has been a fascinating insight into his true intentions.)

We are now one year into Sparkyisation and the evidence of the season so far has been positive. Wins away at Ewood, Selhurst and Fratton Parks, goals from corners in the second and third of those games, four consecutive clean sheets, three equalisers at Old Trafford etc etc etc. Both Khaldoon and Stephen Ireland - the two men most important to Hughes' keeping his job last year - agreed:

"Mark came into an imperfect situation," Khaldoon accepts. "The balance within the squad was extremely erratic and it was very important to add depth in every position."

Stephen Ireland, one of only three players – the others are Micah Richards and Shaun Wright-Philips – in Hughes's first-choice team who were at City before Mansour's takeover, is flourishing under Hughes. "The happiest and most content I have ever been at Man City. Before, I always felt on edge, like I'm not sure what's around the corner."

Ireland says the dressing room was "cliquey" last season, divided by the influence of Elano, who, although "a great guy and very talented player", was, Ireland believes, over-indulged under Eriksson. "The gaffer [Hughes] took some time to get a grip of the club," Ireland says. "He had it tough; he came into a club that had been damaged down the years, with players not having a winning mentality, accepting defeat, accepting losing away from home, accepting things that just weren't right. Mark Hughes came in with his own staff and worked to make that right."

The battle between Hughes and Eriksson - with Elano as Sven's proxy - has been the main story of the last eighteen months. In this summer's spending spree - and cull of all but the last three remaining Eriksson buys - Hughes finally won out. There is now no question of whether or not this is Hughes' team, and unlike last year whatever happens is the ultimate responsibility of the manager. There are a few other interesting bits in that article - including the revelation that Khaldoon had 'an interesting debate' over the signings of Shay Given and Craig Bellamy. Do read it all, and the first two as well.

City finally score from corners

As you all know, we've scored two goals from corners in our last two games. First Carlos Tévez headed in SWP's corner at Selhurst Park, before Emmanuel Adebayor converted Gareth Barry's corner at Fratton Park. Mark Hughes is impressed:

"We wanted to address our threat at set-pieces because last year it wasn't as good as it needed to be.

"We have great delivery from Gareth on the right-hand side, whipping in balls. If it's the perfect ball, irrespective of what the opposition do it's very difficult to stop the ball from getting to the key areas of the box.

"We wanted to have a better threat at set-plays, and that is what we have now."

This is interesting in two ways. On the most basic level, it's good that we can now score from set-pieces. We've been pretty useless from corners for years - so much so that when we do score from corners - Rolando Bianchi at White Hart Lane, Nedum Onuoha at home against Spurs, Dunne at home against Middlesboro - it feels like a big deal. Goals from corners count as much as any others and by successfully exploiting them we increase our chances of winning games.

But there's another point to be made here. There has always been something symbolic about scoring from set-pieces. It betrays a certain experience, a certain worldliness, a lack of illusions or pretensions. Think Mourinho's Chelsea, Allardyce's Bolton, Tony Pulis' Stoke City: teams that score from set-pieces are ones that have the nous to win dirty, in difficult conditions - things that City have never been able to do before - until this year. Hughes' insistence on buying players with EPL experience was meant to create a tougher team with a winning mentality; we had been too weak and soft-centred in previous years. The additions of Shay Given, Craig Bellamy, Gareth Barry, Kolo Touré, Joleon Lescott et al have given us that. And our newfound ability to score from corners is not only a by-product, but also a symbol of this new Manchester City team.

Team spirit

One of the most interesting things to come out of the Blackburn win were comments from Stephen Ireland about improved team spirit:

"The difference between this season and the last is the team spirit," the 22-year-old Irishman said. "From the moment we arrived back for preseason the manager has been drumming it in to us about how we had to be mentally stronger this season. He said we had to have a better attitude and he was right.

"There were some bad habits in this squad last season. The manager and coaches were trying to get us out of them but because we were in Europe and had so many games and so much travelling, I always felt as though we just didn't have enough time on the training field and away from match situations to sort it out and put things right.

"What he has done this time is get players who have the right attitude. They are quality players of high calibre but they are also winners and that's the difference. These guys are inspirational. There is a hunger there and a desire and they have the right approach to everything."

The introduction of a tougher and winninger mentality has been one of the central planks of Sparkyisation. And the purchasing this summer of a number of experienced, trophy-laden players - real champions - has been, if not the culmination, then certainly a significant step forward in this regard.

Of course we've only played one game this season. But grinding out a difficult away victory suggests that this is a mentally stronger City side this season.

SparkyisationPlus

I wrote in the spring about Sparkyisation: Mark Hughes and Mark Bowen's plans to transform the MCFC squad from the mess they inherited into one defined by the work ethic, winning mentality and athleticism that defined thier Blackburn Rovers side. This was implemented through two tracks: the introduction of newly intense fitness training programmes, in stark contrast to Eriksson's more relaxed methods; and the purchasing of more battle-ready troops: Vincent Kompany, Pablo Zabaleta, Craig Bellamy, Nigel de Jong - than the rather lightweight technicians and plodding old pros that Hughes had inherited.

These points are made in an article by Jonathan Northcroft in yesterday's Sunday Times which is certainly worth your attention if you haven't already read it:

Hughes needed fighters. The personalities of the players he has recruited, as much as their (undoubted) abilities and (exorbitant) costs, mean City should now be taken seriously as a football force. Initially, after Mansour’s buyout, they were like a trifle, rich but wobbly. Hughes has set about changing that, buying types who will give his team a proper foundation. He said upon signing Gareth Barry, to kick off his summer transfer business, that City had made “too many mistakes” down the years in signing the wrong characters and from now on “due diligence” would be done. Shaun Wright-Phillips brought up the issue last season when trying to explain how City were winners of the second-highest number of home games in the Premier League and yet possessors of the worst away record of all the non-relegated sides. “The basis of everything is hard work. That’s the side of things we’re trying to get right,” he said.

This summer has seen not just a continuation of Sparkyisation but also an upgrade. In January we looked simply for Premier League experience. When they arrived, Shay Given, Wayne Bridge and Craig Bellamy had played 762 Premier League games between the three of them over the course of the last ten years or so. The other signing, Nigel de Jong, was an import - but he was only bought after we tried and failed to buy Scott Parker. But in the summer window we haven't just looked for Premier League experience, but specifically top six Premier League experience. First Gareth Barry, who captained Aston Villa to consecutive sixth placed finishes the last two years. Then Roque Santa Cruz, who, in his one full season in the Premier League fired Blackburn Rovers up to seventh place. Next was Carlos Tévez - who won two Premier Leagues in two years at Manchester United, the first EPL winner to join us since Kevin Keegan signed Nicolas Anelka and David Seaman. Emmanuel Adebayor finished fourth, fourth, third and fourth in his four years at Arsenal - disappointing relative to the expectations of Arsenal fans but certainly an impressive record to bring to City.

Our next targets are John Terry and Joleon Lescott. Terry captained Chelsea to two Premier League trophies in 2004/05 and 2005/06, and has since led them to finishes of second, second and third. Joleon Lescott has never won the League, but in his three years at Everton they have finished sixth, fifth and fifth. So Hughes is certainly being consistent. Not just Premier League experience, but elite Premier League experience is the first requirement of our current trainsfer targets. Call it SparkyisationPlus. And these players, fully aware of what is required to finish in the upper reaches of the League, form a squad with more nous and experience than we have seen for years at City. Back to Jonathan Northcroft:

A squad is taking shape based not around trophy acquisitions but solid talents with solid personalities, which is not what we expected when their spree began with the arrival of Robinho during Mansour’s first few hours as owner and then continued with the quixotic pursuit of Kaka. Brilliant as the Brazilian midfielder is, City were proposing to spend £240m in fees and wages to get him and Hughes’s subsequent use of that money seems much more suitable for a club in the building process: Tevez, Barry and Santa Cruz cost £140m in fees and wages; Bridge, De Jong and Given £100m the window before. Tevez, Barry, De Jong, Given, Wright-Phillips, Bridge, Kompany, Zabaleta — and, when fit, Santa Cruz and Bellamy — these are players guaranteed to stand toe-to-toe against United and to stride out at Anfield, Stamford Bridge and the Emirates stadium without fear. They will also sweat for the jersey on tough away days at Portsmouth and Stoke.

We'll have to wait and see on this, but I've got a growing sense that he might be right.

'We are starting from the ground level'

Hughes has launched a vigorous defence of his management of the club to date, via a big Mark Ogden article in the Telegraph. He underlines the importance of the changes he's introduced in the background at City, bringing much of the club's infrastructure up to speed with top level Premier League clubs:

Hughes said: "One of the things I realised when I came here was that there were not enough things in place to enable this club to be successful in the future. I'm honest enough to admit that it has taken longer than I expected to change that. We are trying to get the message out that, unlike other clubs, we are starting from the ground level. Maybe people don't want to hear that, though, because it's easier to put pressure on our situation if those things aren't highlighted."

This is absolutely crucial. One of the best insight's I've heard on City's recent history is that the changes of the Shinawatra/Eriksson regime were essentially cosmetic. There was no investment in infrastructure or facilities, no overhaul of backroom staff, no fundamental change in club ethos. It was at heart the Warlde/Makin/MacKintosh/Pearce football club, but with a better coach and a handful of better players. And as Eriksson was undermined by Shinawatra in early 2008, we reverted to the Pearce era but the added element of international criminality.

It is only this season that we've had the financial means and the dynamic personnel to drive the club forward: the Khaldoon/Cook/Hughes team are clearly determined to bring all backroom aspects of the club up to the right level. This has led to improvements to the medical and training facilities, a new coaching team, and a series of senior appointments - including but not limited to Football Administrator Brian Marwood. It is frustrating that on the pitch we're no better than we were last year, but the changes made should see a real improvement in the long term. And Hughes is confident that he'll be here to reap the advantages in 2009/10:

"I have had no indication that I won't be here next season, but why shouldn't I be?" Hughes said. "I'll be really disappointed if I am not, simply because of what we have gone through and the things we have had to face before coming through the other side.

"We have done the pain this season, now we want to see the fruits of our labour. We have come a hell of a long way in a short period of time and that stimulates us because we have done a decent job here and it is nowhere near finished. The turnover of managers here hasn't helped continuity, because they have never had any. Basically, change is expected here. Change for the sake of change."

Opponents of Hughes often characterise the arguments in favour of the manager as 'stability for the sake of stability.' It's an easy point to make, but I do genuinely think that there is an inherent value in managerial stability, particularly in cases such like this. When Hughes has spent all year imposing his methods and understandings on all aspects of the club ('Sparkyisation', if you will), there is a benefit from allowing those plans to take root. Should he be disposed of, not only would all the money invested this year be written off (would Frank Rijkaard really want Craig Bellamy?), but we'd have to undergo the whole process again from scratch, with a whole new set of overhauls and teething problems.

This isn't to give carte blanche for the failures of this season. 0-2 at Middlesbrough, 1-2 at West Brom, 0-2 at Portsmouth - 0-3 against Nottingham Forest at home - there have been some terrible results and performances this year. But the club's whole foundations are being rebuilt. Let's not tear them down and start again.

de Jong: 'I like playing for this manager'

Well he would say that, wouldn't he?

Nigel de Jong is the paradigm Mark Hughes signing: in his early twenties, but with international and European experience, athletic, competitive, physically imposing and capable of running all day; the perfect player for the Premier League.

That said, it is still good to hear him so behind the whole Hughes project, to which he is integral:

"I like playing for this manager. He has given me a lot of confidence since he brought me over to Manchester City," he told Sky Sports News.

"He said he likes a player like me for my defensive qualities in the midfield. I am happy to play at Manchester City and I hope we can be successful.

"He knows how it is with big clubs so he will try and put his vision on this team, to become a good team.

"He is being given time to build a good team. I hope with his experience and his abilities we can drive forward and become successful in the future."

Ladyman/Ireland

Fascinating interview in Saturday's Daily Mail.

The most interesting stuff is, naturally, about his transformation from an inconsistent luxury player (half way between Nani and Samir Nasri for those that weren't watching) in previous seasons to the heart beat of the time that he has now become. And while Mark Hughes has surely had a key role in this, the process started before his appointment. These are the key paragraphs:

May 11, 2008, on the A1 between Middlesbrough and Manchester. He is in his girlfriend’s car. 'It was the last day of the season and we had lost 8-1 at Boro,’ he remembers. 'I didn’t get the team bus. I got Jessica to drive me home and I thought to myself: "This can’t carry on. My career and my reputation are not right."

'After that game we didn’t even get a b******ing. I was so depressed at seeing that people didn’t really care. People were laughing. It was the worst moment of all for me.

'I decided that wasn’t a route I was going down. I didn’t want to live my life travelling home from big defeats with a smile on my face. I just felt like I had to change something after everything that had happened. So, the next day I started training. I went up to the hills in Glossop with a martial arts expert, training from 7 to 11am. I dedicated my whole summer to working with this guy.

As interesting as this is about Ireland, it also gives a strong sense of the terrible mess the club was in at the end of the Eriksson era. That players were laughing in the dressing room after an 8-1 defeat to Boro really tells us much about the shattering of managerial authority and team spirit in those spring months. And this in turn makes me more sympathetic to Hughes. If this is what he inherited, his turning City into a successful, serious football club is a much harder job than I first thought.

Winter on Sparkyisation

Well, almost.

Henry Winter previewed City v Aalborg today by writing about Hughes' desire to impose himself on the club, in order to make us mentally stronger:

Hughes had moved on, but he knew all about the time and effort, the mistakes and the lessons endured en route before United found their reward. In detailing his ambitions for his present club, Hughes talked of City as "they'' and his management team as "we''. He was determined to impose "our" philosophy on "them'', particularly in building a team and mentality capable of winning a competition like the Uefa Cup.

"It's been too long,'' said Hughes of City's 33-year wait for major honours. "For the amount of time they've been in the top tier of football they should have won more trophies. We are trying to change the mentality of everyone here and that takes time. But we are starting that process and will be helped if we can progress in trophies like the Uefa Cup. We're in good shape. That first trophy is important to everybody. [emphasis added]

This is along very similar lines to what I wrote yesterday.

Winning mentality

When I wrote about the toughening up process which I labelled Sparkyisation I focussed mainly on physical strength and stamina. Craig Bellamy, Pablo Zabaleta, Vincent Kompany, Wayne Bridge and Nigel de Jong are all better athletes than those that they replaced. They are bigger, stronger and last longer - into games, and, if all goes to plan, into seasons. But I think Sparkyisation extends beyond the merely physical to the mental as well.

It's about inculcating the squad with a mental strength so that it fights to the death not just for big games but twice a week every week for nine months each year. Look at Manchester United, (or Chelsea 2004-07) - they never know when they are beaten, they fight back from deficits, they score late goals and score crucial goals. We're nowhere near this. One of the most disappointing things of this season has been our failure to launch late comebacks, but our vulnerability to them. How many late game-changing goals have we scored this season? The late own goal at Midtjylland, and the equalisers at the Parks of Ewood and St. James. But on the other side? The stoppage time goals which lost us the home games against both Merseyside teams, the late equaliser at Brighton which took it to extra-time, the late losses at the Hawthornes and the Reebok, and just last month the late equaliser against København. This is not one of our strong points.

But mental strength goes beyond just late goals, it's also about the whole club's approach to success. Having success rendered so alien to City over the past thirty three years has meant that even the prospect of challenging for a trophy is viewed with incredulity. Remember our two FA Cup quarter-final surrenders of March 2006 and 2007? They were the performances of a side who didn't take its presence in a cup quarter-final seriously, who felt a bit embarrassed to be there. And this wasn't against Manchester United and Liverpool; it was West Ham United and Blackburn Rovers. Removing that whole irony about success has to be one of the main thrusts of the club's leadership. One of my favourite things Garry Cook has ever said was this, eight days before the ADUG takeover:

“I’ve got to change the culture here. I talk to my employees about it. You get 'This is England, not America, you know’. And then 'This is Manchester, not London’. And then 'This is City, not United’. So do you roll over, play dead and go home? No. Today you can grow faster than it took United.

And in the context of the UEFA Cup Mark Hughes has made similar comments. This article in Thursday's Independent by Ian Herbert quotes Hughes talking about the importance of winning a trophy; both on its own terms and as a symptom (and cause) of a new winning mentality within the club:

Hughes has gone to great lengths and incurred serious unpopularity in some quarters at Eastlands to imbue his side with what he calls a "winning mentality", something Robinho has also said he feels City lack. For Hughes that means stripping away years of poor match preparation and cultural flabbiness at City, as he sees it. But a trophy would be a fundamental part of the club's cultural development; a staging post on the bigger Manchester City journey.

"Winning a trophy brings many things to a club," Hughes said. "It gives you an understanding of what it takes to be successful. It changes the mentality of players, sometimes positively, sometimes negatively if you think you are going to do it every year. There are things that you have to be mindful of and you have to hit the same standards year on year – that is what the top clubs are able to do."

I don't think we're going to win the UEFA Cup. But if, in eight days time, we have overcome Aalborg we must not get carried away (although we must not be embarrassed to be in the last eight), but simply realise that this is just what serious football clubs do.

Sparkyisaton : Outcomes

This is a follow up to this post, about Hughes' plans for the team and how he has gone about implementing them.

Attempting to evaluate how well Hughes has done as manager is inherently very difficult. There is nothing against which to test Hughes' achievements - no controlled element that can be used as a yardstick. The criticism is often made of Hughes that we are no better than we were last year, or in fact worse. (It is unlikely that we will match last season's points total of 55). When combined with the £100m+ he's spent, it's easy to paint Hughes as a failure.

What I think this analysis underestimates is the mess the team was in when Hughes took over. April through August 2008 was a very unsettling and rather unpleasant time to be a City fan: Thaksin's needless and narcissistic destruction of managerial authority, the 8-1, the ludicrous Far East tour, Thaksin's going on the run, the attempted Ireland and Ćorluka sales and all that. It was a time when I genuinely feared a Leeds United scenario, as managerial changes and enforced sales of players saw us plummet back down the divisions. What I'm getting at here is that while our boardroom stability is clearly thanks to the ADUG intervention, Hughes deserves praise from turning us into a moderately competitive outfit at the start of the season.

It's widely reported that in the wake of the events of May, the players threatened to go on strike and refuse to attend the Thailand tour. Richard Dunne thought of leaving and was surely not the only one. So although Hughes inherited the same personnel that won 55 points in 2007/08, he also inherited them in a state of discord and disillusionment. To suggest that that squad could go on to replicate their performances of the Eriksson season after going through that period of tumult is unrealistic.

So our question must be: given the squad in the state he inherited in, has Hughes succeeded to make it tougher and stronger? The quick answer must surely be no. There can be no avoiding the simple fact that City have been patchy and inconsistent this season. Our home form has been very good - nine wins and five losses with four easy home games left. Our away form, though, has been shocking. One win, five draws and eight losses - with four of our hardest away trips remaining. And despite Hughes' claims to be installing a mental strength in the side, we never won from behind, while often throwing away leads. We lost from ahead against Chelsea, Liverpool (h) and Spurs, drew from winning positions at Newcastle, Hull and Fulham. For the first few months of the season all ouf our wins were by big margins: 3-0, 3-0, 6-0, 3-0 and 5-1. When we played beautiful football, we were unstoppable. But beneath this veneer of class we were very fragile; when we didn't dazzle we folded, it was all very frustrating.

There have been recent signs, though, that we are improving in this regard. We are starting to consistently grind out wins at home, something which eluded us in 2008. Of course, it would be better to always play like we did against Portsmouth and Hull, but we do seem to have added an element of grit to our game which can be called upon when needed: the 1-0 against Wigan, 2-1 against Newcastle and 1-0 against Middlesboro were all games where we won without playing brilliantly, something we were not previously capable of. The 2-0 against Villa was a combination of some of our best attacking football with the defensive solidity we've seen more of recently. Even our away form has started to get less bad. The 2-2 at Blackburn suggested an ability to battle the team hadn't previously possessed. Bad results followed - Stoke and Portsmouth - but the draws in Liverpool and Copenhagen were both impressive. Progress is never fully linear (although the performance at West Ham wasn't too bad), and we may not win another Premier League game away from home this season. But the signs, from the two months or so, are that City are finally starting to toughen up, that the process of Sparkyisation is starting to bear fruit. But whether or not this warrants Hughes' staying another season is a different question.

'Sparkyisation' : Purposes and methods

This is a word I've started to use and I feel like I ought to unpack what I mean by it.

Sparkyisation is the process the club has been undergoing this season. It is the imposition of a certain footballing ethos upon the club, in reaction against the state of the club when Hughes took over. So it has both a positive and a negative aspect; order-destroying and order-creating.

It is based around an understanding of how to be successful in the Premier League - through quick, hard-working, competitive and experienced players. It, and this is crucial, defines itself against Eriksson's Manchester City side of 2007/08. Hughes has been openly critical of Eriksson-era City. He said of the success of autumn 2007 that "everyone in football knew [that it] wasn't going to be sustainable". The criticisms focus on unfit players, insufficient physical preparation, too relaxed an attitude at the training ground, a lack of mental toughness. Each of these failings would be transformed by Hughes (and his coaching team) into strengths: weakness, laziness, that certain irony and diffidence of the Eriksson team would turn into strength, discipline, order, all underlined by a Stakhanovite work ethic throughout the club. Hughes essentially wanted to transform the squad he inherited - a mix of talented foreigners bought by Eriksson, old pros bought by Pearce and talented Academy youngsters into an upgraded version of his Blackburn side.

(On a side point, we should recognise that Hughes' criticisms of Eriksson also have a strategic aspect. The worse he paints the situation before his arrival, the more space he creates for himself. Just look at Harry Redknapp.)

The method of Sparkyisation was essentially two-fold: transfers and training. Hughes' transfer policy in both the August/September and January windows demonstrates a commitment to this approach. Accepting that the deals for Jô and Tal Ben Haim were arranged before Hughes' arrival, and that the Robinho transfer was done over his head, Hughes' seven other signings have all been on a certain template. The six outfield players - Shaun Wright-Phillips, Pablo Zabaleta, Vincent Kompany, Nigel de Jong, Craig Bellamy and Wayne Bridge - are all aged between 22 and 29, all full internationals (Zabaleta is the only one not to have at least twenty senior caps), and all quick, athletic and competitive. They are all now first choices in their positions.

Contrast briefly (as Hughes has done) with those players brought by Eriksson. They tended to be characterised as technically excellent but unprepared for the physical demands of the Premier League - Geovanni, Garrido, Castillo and Bianchi certainly fall into this category, Elano and Ćorluka arguably do. He also brought in inexperienced players. None of Fernandes (20 when we signed him), Garrido (22) and Bianchi (24) had won a full international cap when we signed them. Felipe Caicedo and Valeri Bozhinov had played international football, but were only 19 and 21 when we bought them. Of all the Eriksson signings, who would Hughes have bought, given the choice? (Don't forget that Jô is effectively an Eriksson signing, and certainly fits with more of his criteria than with Hughes'). Martin Petrov, certainly. Maybe Bozhinov. Possibly Ćorluka. But no one else.

But back to my main argument. While creating a squad of 'his players', Hughes and co. also engaged in a process of molding that squad into one better equipped to play Premier League football. This was through the introduction of intense physical training of a sort completely alien to the Eriksson era. This is something Hughes often talks about publicly - he describes it better than me. Read this, this, this, and this. If you can use google you can easily find more. The focus seems to be on hard physical work during training so as to improve players' speed, fitness and stamina. This ought to lead to a team which performs better in the latter stages of matches and of seasons. (But Blackburn away and København (not Aalborg) at home remain the only games this year where we've noticeably stepped up a gear in the latter stages.)

So that's the purposes and methods of Sparkyisation. I'll write about the outcomes of Sparkyisation, the main barriers in its way, and its future prospects tomorrow.

Progress

Henry Winter writes about the steady progress City have been making recently:

City deserved their point. Slowly but surely, City are demonstrating signs of real growth under Hughes. This will come as no surprise to Hughes’ many admirers in the game, but this improvement in form and position is a well-timed reminder to City’s Abu Dhabi owners of their manager’s quality before Thursday’s board meeting.

City failed with their transfer-window pursuit of Kaka but their executive chairman, Garry Cook, did bring in Bellamy, Nigel de Jong and Shay Given, all excellent yesterday. The disastrous Kaka flirtation over, evolution not revolution now appears the City way.

This is a very important point. Taking a long term view, there has been a real improvement in the team's attitude in the last six to eight weeks. This is rather obscured by the very short term and reactive way that people talk and write about football. Not all change is smooth, not all progress is linear. Just because we played badly at Stoke and Portsmouth it doesn't wipe out the gains demonstrated in the Wigan and Newcastle wins, and the Copenhagen and Anfield trips this week. If we lose at the Boleyn Ground next Sunday it doesn't render today's 1-1 draw meaningless.

I'm currently working on a mini-essay for the blog, 'On Sparkyisation', about the process of change we've undergone this season. But it's ballooning in length and time-consuming. I'll try to get it out some time this week.