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.

David Conn on behind the scenes changes

One of the great untold stories of the ADUG transformation of Manchester City is the money which has been spent revamping the club's training, medical and office facilities. After years of underinvestment under both the Thaksin and John Wardle regimes Mark Hughes - and, three months later, Sheikh Mansour - inherited infrastructure that was simply not up to the task of supporting a Premier League football club with any pretensions of success. David Conn's second Guardian article, which focusses on the mess the club were in last summer, picks up the story soon after the takeover:

"I must say I was extremely surprised," Khaldoon recalled. "I took a tour with Mark and I couldn't believe what I saw. It was not the minimum level of infrastructure required for a top-tier club.

"When I returned I immediately went to Sheikh Mansour, showed him pictures of the facility and he was very straight to say, 'this is unacceptable'. There were some quick fixes, quick wins, we could do at City, like fixing the gym, the medical facility – we had to do it quickly, because it was simply unacceptable."

The combination of Mark Hughes' drive and expertise and Sheikh Mansour's limitless cash meant that the facilities could finally be dragged up the required standard. And now City are fortunate enough to have the structures in place to support the playing staff as much as they need:

Where before there were a handful of stationary bikes, a couple of treadmills, no dedicated weights room and desultory gloom, now there are 20 bikes, all the weights and the multi-gym Hughes' staff wanted for training and rehab, a six-bed medical centre, refurbished hydrotherapy plunge baths, a new kit room, and motivational messages slapped optimistically on the walls. One is Muhammad Ali's famous quote: "The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses, behind the lines, in the gym and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights."

A very similar story applies to the organisation of the administrative and commercial side of the club. Years of underinvestment, amateurism and complacency had seen it fall way behind the standard required:

Khaldoon was also taken aback by the holes he found in the organisation. A businessman schooled in corporate systems, chief executive of an Abu Dhabi fund with more than $10bn of government assets under investment, he found City had no personnel department, no finance director.

"I found it shocking," he reflected. "In the famous Premier League, to run without basic functions like these. I'll be frank, I expected it to be more structured. One of the big surprises was how amateurish it was."

It's a story of a transformation as remarkable as that from Gelson Fernandes to Gareth Barry, or Benjani to Adebayor. In the darkest moments of last season the club leadership - Hughes, Cook and Khaldoon - always stayed on message: the club is going through transformative changes behind the scenes, there are likely to be teething problems, but our focus and our commitment to the current management is clear. I took them at their word, and am pleased now to have had my faith vindicated by evidence of what was going on.

David Conn on the last days of Thaksin

We have a lot to be grateful to Sheikh Mansour for. Spending £200m on players in twelve months has been rather helpful. We are, if you hadn't noticed, a significantly better team because of it. We have a decent shot at a trophy or two in the next few years, for the first time in my lifetime. I could go on and on but I don't need to.

One thing, though, that needs to be said is this: we ought to be grateful to Sheikh Mansour for what he saved us from, almost as much as for what he has turned us into. Because in the months leading up to the takoever, we were in a real mess. The Thaksin project had been unravelling for some time, but by August we had no money, an owner on the run, players almost being sold without the manager's say-so (remember that August weekend when Corluka and Ireland almost left), and £19m strikers coming in with just as little managerial input. There's nothing quite like a badly run football club, and for those summer weeks, I would go as far as to say that we were in a worse state than any top flight club in English state. Debt, chaos and panic are one thing. But international arrest warrants? That's a whole new ball game.

This is the central point of David Conn's second exclusive City news story, appearing in Saturday's Guardian. And what he reveals suggests that things were even worse than we thought. The biggest single revelation is that Mark Hughes considered quitting, such was the mess he walked in on:

"I made the switch from Blackburn because I thought City was a club with potential, in a good financial position, and there would be money available," he reflected ruefully. "The reality wasn't exactly what was described and sold to me. In fairness we were able to go into the transfer market, but there seemed a focus that players had to be sold, and I realised that maybe the resources weren't in place that I thought."

The Carrington facilities were also not as he had expected, bearing no evidence of investment. "The training ground was not fit for purpose," Hughes recalled plainly. "I was quite shocked by how run down it was. Blackburn Rovers is a good club, well-run and organised, it has top-drawer facilities as a consequence of the money Jack Walker invested, and I made the assumption …" he paused. "That was my failing last year; I made too many assumptions. I assumed that people and facilities would be top quality and it was patently obvious they weren't."

The other man who stepped right into the middle of the mess was Garry Cook, brought by Thaksin in June 2008 to run the club following Alistair Mackintosh's depature and Thaksin's Richard Kimble moment. And, as with Hughes, by August he was regretting his decision to come to City:

Cook felt that the job he had been brought to do, to lead a "renaissance" of City, was impossible, and that "the fabric of the football club had been taken away". He soon realised there was no money; City borrowed from Standard Bank against Premier League TV money not yet received, and bought players on deposit.

"Thaksin's money was locked away. Every bit of revenue was being accelerated and the players were being mortgaged. We got into a position where we couldn't pay the players – and John Wardle [the former chairman who had sold his shares and left the board] was asked to lend the club £2m. I was working stupid hours to make sure I was not missing anything; I was living in this paranoia...

"My wife had packed up everything in our house in the States, the furniture was in transit, and I sat in my hotel room in Cheshire crying down the phone. I felt I had unravelled everything, undone all my hard work, because I had been seduced into this role. I realised I had taken my family into the lion's den."

This is pretty serious stuff. Just think of a possible alternative history here: no buyer comes in late in August 2008, meaning that those late purchases - Shaun Wright-Phillips and Pablo Zabaleta - were never possible. The chaos continues. Hughes and Cook quit later that autumn. Graeme Souness is brought in to keep us up. Thaksin, on the run, can only hope that the club continues to function in his absence. Souness is forced to sell Elano, Martin Petrov, Richard Dunne, Stephen Ireland and Micah Richards. Jô is sent back to CSKA Moscow. Thaksin desperately tries to offload the club to John Wardle or David Bernstein. Souness gets City relegated. Then what: more sales? Administration? The takeover was as good news for what it brought us as for what it delivered us from.

David Conn on Abu Dhabi motivations

We are very lucky this week to have The Guardian's David Conn doing a big three part series on the Abu Dhabi takeover at City. Conn is an excellent journalist who writes very well about the internal operation of football clubs; it is no surprise that he has turned his attention to City.

I appreciate that I'm a few days with this - the first part was in Friday's paper - but I'm going to tackle them in the order they appeared. The first article focussed on Abu Dhabi itself, with a fascinating Khaldoon al-Mubarak interview, and the motivations behind the takeover. The common perception is that it was launched as a means to enhance the reputation and prestige of Abu Dhabi. And the association between the club and the emirate in the minds of many westerners is something that the chairman acknowledges:

"There is an appreciation of the association the club have with Abu Dhabi that we hold very dearly," Khaldoon, with calm, steady conviction, explained. "There is almost a personification of the club with the values we hold as Abu Dhabi, as Sheikh Mansour. These are loyalty, commitment, discipline, long-term thinking, respect, appreciation of history...

"We are acknowledging that how we are handling this project is telling a lot to the world about how we are," Khaldoon said. "The UAE is different from other Arab countries. People think the Arab world is one, but it is not. This is showing the world the true essence of who Abu Dhabi is and what Abu Dhabi is about. That is something new, something we didn't really plan for."

The interview gets more interesting later on, as Khaldoon suggests that this prestige by association dynamic was not in fact the driving force behind the takeover:

The reasons, he explained, were twofold. Mansour believes City will be an investment, worth even more than he will have spent on it, if built into a top European club. But primarily, Khaldoon said: "Sheikh Mansour is a huge football fan. There is an enjoyment, a pleasure, which comes from owning it."

This idea that after an initial burst of investment a club can be made profitable is one that is shared by Roman Abramovich. Insofar as there are precedents for what Abu Dhabi has done to City, Abramovich's Chelsea is the best one, and their attempts to become self-financing have seen the club's trophy acquisition slow down relative to the Mourinho years of the mid-2000s. But Sheikh Mansour is insistent that City can, in time, stop sucking in his money:

"Sheikh Mansour is an astute businessman, who believes you can create a value from football that has not yet been accomplished," Khaldoon explained. "There is a pure, football, emotional side to it, and a big business side, too. I think what attracted Sheikh Mansour was the great football journey, but also there is a business sense, that we can create a franchise, a business, over years, which will create value and reap a long term return."

Well, we'll see. Football clubs have a habit of resembling financial black holes, particularly those which are built up on large cash acquisitions of players. Even United and Arsenal, who have successful youth development programmes and managers committed to them still need to spend big money on players to succeed. I'm sure Sheikh Mansour and Khladoon have done the sums and everything, but I'd be surprised if we're returning much of that investment to Abu Dhabi for some time.