Hughes joins Fulham

Former City boss Mark Hughes was appointed Fulham manager last night.

It's pleasing news. I was very disappointed for Mark Hughes when he was sacked. Roberto Mancini has done better than I thought he would, and so my reaction looks fairly hysterical in retrospect. But I still think, seven months on, that Hughes was unfairly dismissed and that the club acted quite improperly towards him.

Looking back on it, his reign was only ever promising rather than successful. He will not go down as one of the great Manchester City managers, or even one of the better ones of modern times. But he brought us through some turbulence and gave us glimpses of the meaningful moments that define a successful club. And so I'm sympathetic to him, and pleased to see him back in management.

I think he'll do very well in Fulham. It is - and I don't mean this condescendingly - back in his comfort zone, or at least closer to it than ADUG-era Manchester City was. A traditional club, operating on a budget, with few pretensions of style but the ability to play discomfiting hosts in their Archibald Leitch stadium. He will, along with loyal lieutenants Eddie Niedzwicki, Mark Bowen and Kevin Hitchcock, have a smooth transition. They should be able to better last season's twelfth place finish.

They might do even better than that if they sign Craig Bellamy. That is the rumour in today's papers. I can just about see this one happening. I'm sure he's on his way out of City, but I do think we might be unenthusiastic about selling to rivals as direct as Spurs. A move to Fulham wouldn't have the Champions League football available at White Hart Lane, but you can never underestimate the personal bond between Bellamy and Hughes. It's the reason Bellamy was so good for us in 2009, and so problematic in 2010. Re-united with Hughes and Bowen he would be a serious asset for Fulham.

Stephen Ireland is also possible. His place in our 25 man squad is not certain. And while he will attract attention from most of the Premier League, I don't think becoming a squad player at a top six club would be good for him. He is clearly a player who needs the team built round him (in 4-2-3-1 or similar), and who needs the constant emotional support of a manager. I had thought Steve Bruce's Sunderland was the best such platform for him but Mark Hughes' Fulham - with the manager who brought the best from him - would be just as good if not better. He'd have to leave Alderley Edge though.

And then there's Roque Santa Cruz, who had his best game in blue at the Cottage last March. Technically he's in a different league from Bobby Zamora but he's so unreliable I can't see Mohammad al Fayed shelling out on him.

I'm very sympathetic to Fulham and always have been, and so having Hughes and some former MCFC players there will only make me even more so. I wish them the best of luck.

Managers, tactics and traditions

For some time I've been meaning to write about the legitimacy of style-based criticisms of Roberto Mancini. I was preparing to do so after the Chelsea game, anticipating a fairly inspid 1-0 or 2-0 defeat. Things went fairly off-script that day, though, and so discussing criticisms of Mancini felt rather inappropriate.

But this week two genuine City legends have given authoritative voice to what are growing murmurs in the stands, the pubs and the message-boards: are Roberto Mancini's tactics too cautious, too joyless - and if so, are they at odds with the traditions of the club? First it was Peter Barnes speaking out:

"I'd love to see, and I'm sure City fans would agree, a 4-4-2 with Adam Johnson on the left, Shaun Wright-Phillips on the right, and Carlos Tevez and Craig Bellamy together up front," said Barnes.

"The more attacking talent you have out there the better, for me, and those four going at teams with pace and skill is a frightening prospect for any opposition.

"Stick two from Gareth Barry, Nigel de Jong and Stevie Ireland in the centre, and that is your six to try to grab that final Champions League place."

And today we have heard from Colin Bell:

"It frustrates me," said Bell. "I don't know if it's because he's a foreign manager, and it's the system he has played for years.

"Under Malcolm Allison and Joe Mercer, the theme was always that we were better than the opposition, so just go out and score more than them.

"We never laid our stall out for a draw. They had us believing that every game in which we turned out, we could win.

"If you aim for a win, a draw is acceptable. But if you aim for a draw, the only other result is a loss."

The content of these criticisms will be familiar to all City fans. Things are, without doubt, much more cautious under Mancini. Three defensive midfielders is the norm, as is the deployment of a cautious option - Pablo Zabaleta, Sylvinho, Gareth Barry - in wide-midfield. The full backs are much less buccaneering than they were under Mark Hughes, as are the whole midfield. All tactical systems are balances between defensive solidity and attacking fluidity, and Mancini has very clearly and honestly traded one off against the other. And he's probably right to do so, after the cavalier catastrophes of autumn 2009. (I mean, 3-3 against Burnley, at home! 3-3 at the Reebok! Blowing a 2-0 home lead against Fulham, and almost doing the same against Sunderland.) I think there's a broad consensus here.

The question, though, is whether there's anything particularly wrong with this. Does a defensive approach make for joyless football? And, even more importantly, does this fit with the traditions of Manchester City? Because the only reason I'm writing this today is because of the comments of Colin Bell and Peter Barnes, two players who understand as much as any others what City fans expect from their teams. I hope I'm not making any claims above our station here. I'm not saying that City are on a par with Barcelona or Ajax or Holland or Brazil, I'm not saying that our football is meant to be shimmeringly beautiful, or jaw-droppingly inventive ('Revie Plan' aside), but it is meant to be entertaining.

At the very least, you expect bodies to be thrown forward, and creative players to be given license. Since I've been a fan, I've been lucky enough to see Georgi Kinkladze, Paulo Wanchope, Ali Benarbia, Eyal Berkovic, Elano and Robinho in blue. Given that we've finished in the top half of the top flight three or four times in fifteen years that's a fairly impressive bunch. The non-performances of the Brazilians under Hughes was certainly frustrating (and I was pro-Hughes, rather than pro-Elano), and those results I mentioned above were infuriating, but I think one can legitimately argue that in his commitment to attacking football, and exciting players, Hughes was operating in the finest traditions of MCFC.

But this is where it gets really tricky: Mancini's catenaccio might just get us into the Champions League. We're probably very marginal favourites, given that Villa and Everton have still got to come to Eastlands. And Hughes' 4-2-4 was taking us to fifth or sixth at best. While nothing is guaranteed it is probably correct to say that by jettisoning the traditions of creativity and unpredictability, Mancini is increasing our chances of success. If we make it into fourth it will be our first time in Europe's elite competition since 1969. But if it's not done in the style of Joe Mercer's side, will it mean less?

Bowen speaks on Robinho

Our former assisstant manager becomes, I think, the first member of the Mark Hughes team to speak publicly since their dismissal just before Christmas. (Of course, Hughes made a statement through the LMA but it was very carefully worded and so is quite different from this sort of media engagement.) Bowen was speaking about Robinho - not exactly his favourite player at City:

"He took a lot of stick, but he did massively underperform, especially away from home," said Bowen.

"I just thought that, physically, he wasn't really up to the challenges of the Premier League."

"There is no doubting that if and when he went to another league, or back to Brazil, it would be a different style of football and it would suit him better," said Bowen.

"We always felt he could possibly blossom and get used to the Premier League but he wasn't really up to the week in week out challenges."

The sentiments themselves aren't a surprise - everyone knew this is how Hughes and Bowen felt about Robinho - but seeing them expressed publicly is still interesting. It will be worth keeping a close eye for more public utterances from Hughes, Bowen, Niedzwiecki etc, to shed more light on their time at City and the circumstances of their departure. And with a return to management rumoured for Hughes, we could well hear more quite soon.

Petrov's frustration and future

The Sunday papers are full of interviews with Martin Petrov, one of the main winners of the Mancini era thus far. He has started all three matches to date, which seems to have soothed his discontent, having been so firmly on the fringes under Mark Hughes. While it is always nice to have happy players, this is particularly important right now: Petrov has only six months left on his contract and so is free to negotiate a Bosman departure in the summer. I'd be sad to leave him City, but I would be distraught to see him join one of our rivals on a free. There are not many Premier League clubs that would turn down the chance to take him in those circumstances.

Petrov talks about his frustration at failing to hold down a regular place in the side despite doing well when called upon:

“But it’s difficult when you play well, score goals, do good and are the best player in the month of October and then spend another three games on the bench. For that, I’m a little bit unhappy — because I think I deserved to play...

“It was difficult because I’ve been away from Bulgaria for 12 years and this is the first time I had the problem that I didn’t play. It was a new situation and maybe I made mistakes because I was too frustrated.”

I can see why he would be frustrated. It's unfortunate for him that he plays in the same position as Craig Bellamy - our best outfield player this season. But it can't have been fun doing as well as he did when selected and still not starting regularly. Petrov admits that he considered leaving in January:

‘I was frustrated with Mark Hughes as the manager and maybe I didn’t handle it very well. For the first time in my life I’d play well then get left out of the team.

‘I would sometimes go home and tell my wife we would have to leave. We were happy as a family in Manchester but my situation was not good at work...

'I was not getting a chance to play when I deserved to. Mark Hughes never explained why.

‘If the manager had not changed, I might have left in January. But in football things can change in one day.'

That change has also involved increased tactical and organisational work on the training ground, which Petrov explains:

“Before [Mancini’s] first game against Stoke, we did a lot of work tactically. I think everyone now knows they must work on the pitch and knows exactly what the manager wants from them, and because of that the team is getting better and better,” Petrov says. “It’s very clear what each individual must do under this manager and I think that’s normal, because he comes from Italy — and you know how it is in Italy with the tactical stuff. We know we have a very good squad with big players but that if you don’t play like a team you can’t win.”

So what of his long term future?

"We have spoken once or twice, my agent and the club," he said. "Nothing significant has happened yet.

"I want to stay if everything runs well. Now is a different situation for me."

I'm very keen that a new deal for Petrov is tied up as soon as possible. A bosman transfer to Spurs or even United would literally ruin my summer.

Petrov pleased to play

And surprisingly candid in his criticisms of Mark Hughes:

"Every time I score, I go to the bench!

"Now is not the time to speak about my situation. In the past six months too many things have happened with me. Maybe in the future I will speak 100 per cent. But what he was doing with me I think was unfair...

He said: "I have been away from Bulgaria for ten years, and it's the first time for a long time I've not been playing. But I'm a professional and I grow stronger. If you're not playing, you grow stronger for the next time that you do."

He's out of contract in the summer. If the events of Saturday make him more likely to stay, it's certainly a good thing.

The press conference

Another big day yesterday - Roberto Mancini's first press conference as City boss - and it was almost as dramatic as the last few. First Garry Cook read out a statement, trying to explain and justify the board's decision to sack Mark Hughes and appoint Mancini mid-season. This included a claim that the job was only offered to Mancini last Thursday. I will let James Ducker take up the narrative:

Having stressed in his statement that City had approached Mancini only after the 3-0 defeat by Tottenham Hotspur last Wednesday, Cook was forced into the most embarrassing of climb-downs when the former Inter Milan coach admitted that he had met al-Mubarak and Sheikh Mansour, the club’s billionaire owner, a fortnight ago. Oops. Cook at that point went crimson and, squirming in his seat, had little choice but to correct his original claims.

As such, his statement that “I think it is important for people to know that Roberto was only offered the job after the Spurs game; we negotiated on Thursday and finalised his agreement on Friday” became this: “Two weeks ago Roberto met with Khaldoon,” Cook said. “After the Spurs game, there were further discussions on a more serious level.

“The [original] discussions were general. They were about football. We were considering our managerial options at the time. It [the manager’s job] was discussed in general terms.”

It was one of the most remarkable examples of someone slitting their own throat in modern football.

Note that Garry Cook's statement was revealed to be false not by some great Woodward and Bernstein operation, nor by a counter-statement from Mark Hughes and Mark Bowen, but by an admission from Roberto Mancini himself. If the new manager, who has an obvious motivation to back up the official board line, can expose flaws in the statement, then it suggests that it will take no great prodding to reveal the whole thing as a sham.

There are so many more unanswered questions, but I will just take one set. Cook said that after the summer recruitment drive the target was changed from sixth place to seventy points. How explicit was this made to Mark Hughes? He certainly denied it in his LMA statement. How far below 70 points would have been ok? Were we not close enough to the necessary average to judge Hughes at the end of the season? And what of the cups? A League Cup semi final is beyond our usual achievement, was this factored in at no point? Cook said that 'the trajectory of recent results' was below our target, but as Henry Winter pointed out:

An eight year-old could have picked holes in Cook's anti-conspiracy theory. Observing that the Premier League target for this season had been changed to "70 points'', Cook rather ignored that the table showed City were on course for that under Hughes. If they win their next two games, Stoke City and Wolves away, City will have 35 points from 19 games, halfway to Cook's target at the midway point of the season.

Anyway, the truth is out now. The manager's job was effectively offered to Mancini after the Hull game; Hughes' fate was left to rest on a dodgy penalty decision against Kolo Touré. In one nostalgic sense this is good news, it tells us that there is something immortal about the soul of Manchester City. We can sell Maine Road, knock it down and move to a 47,000 seater stadium across town, we can get taken over by a Thai Prime Minister and then an Arab Sheikh, we can buy Robinho, Shay Given and Carlos Tévez, but still, in a quite fundamental sense, Peter Swales will always be chairman of MCFC.

Burt: Bellamy transfer request

A worrying report coming out this lunchtime - Craig Bellamy, to whom Mark Hughes was close to a father figure - is so upset at his departure that he has issued a transfer request:

Bellamy is understood to have delivered his request although it’s not known whether its verbal or written, and informed City that he is so angry by what happened that he would prefer not to play for the club again. Mancini’s first game in charge is the Boxing Day fixture against Stoke City.

We should get confirmation of this one way or the other soon. I'd be gutted if he went, he's one of my favourites. And if Mancini starts Robinho ahead of him on Saturday I will not be very impressed.

Conn: Decision made in Abu Dhabi

David Conn, one of the most insightful reporters of the machinations within football clubs, has written today that the decision to sack Hughes came out of Abu Dhabi, rather than the Cook and Marwood double act:

From Abu Dhabi, Mansour and Khaldoon looked at their Premier League acquisition and considered that they had lavishly improved everything, the playing squad, training ground, stadium and all the supporting infrastructure – of which they believe Marwood's contribution to be a significant plus – but the one area which had stayed the same was Hughes and his coaching staff. They formed the view, which looks hasty to many in football but does not feel that way to them, that if they left Hughes in charge, the performances were not going to improve.

They will say, still, that they wanted Hughes and his team to succeed, and City sources argue that Marwood and Cook gave the manager full support until Mansour's confidence was finally lost.

Reports like this are difficult to evaluate. I suppose I would rather it was Sheikh Mansour who decided to sack Hughes. It's easier to live with being run by an impulsive billionaire owner than it is by his sneaky, whispering employees. A well run football club should be run by experts who work for the owners, I think, rather than the owners running it themselves. We just seem to have the wrong experts. Any chance we can buy David Gill off United?

Telegraph: Cook tried for Hiddink first

A Jason Burt article in the Telegraph today claims that Garry Cook offered the job to Guus Hiddink before the deal was done with Roberto Mancini:

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.

Sacking reax

Sam Wallace, The Independent

In the space of one afternoon, Manchester City became a very different club. The kind of club who leave their struggling manager marooned on the touchline while the news of his demise spreads around the stadium. The kind of club who allow their manager to absorb his own fate in the full glare of the television cameras while his successor has already been anointed.

Every step of the way on Saturday, City got it wrong. First, they made Hughes wait until after the win over Sunderland to learn his fate officially, although he, like everyone else, had known the truth for a lot longer.

Henry Winter, Daily Telegraph

No class. No intelligence. No credibility. When Khaldoon al-Mubarak became chairman of one of English football's most famous footballing institutions, the feeling was that Manchester City were in good hands. No more.

Until his craven decision to sack Mark Hughes on Saturday, Mubarak had seemed a breath of fresh air after the stench of the Thaksin Shinawatra era. Of course, there was all the nonsense of rushing in Robinho without proper consultation with the manager or consideration over whether the Brazilian had the requisite character. Of course, there was Mubarak's similarly misguided pursuit of Kaka but that was as much down to the naïvety of his excitable chief executive, Garry Cook.

Matt Lawton, Daily Mail

But Cook lost his nerve and proved, yet again, just how ill-suited he is to the role he believes he is performing - not just turning City into one of the most successful clubs in Europe but one that commands respect.

To do that, you need a bit of class, a bit of style. But the manner in which Hughes was dismissed, indeed the manner in which Cook has conducted himself since moving from Nike to the City of Manchester Stadium 19 months ago, would suggest he is seriously lacking in such qualities.

Oliver Kay, The Times

The rights and wrongs of Hughes’s dismissal have been debated elsewhere — a personal view is that he was on the right track and should have been given until the end of the season — but, from the outside, even when aware of his troubles in dealing with characters such as Robinho and Emmanuel Adebayor, it looks like a board hitting the panic button.

Oliver Holt, The Mirror

But now City will have to reap what they have sown.

First of all, that will mean a widespread loss of goodwill. Because the way they've behaved towards Hughes shows that, actually, they've got less class than Chelsea, not more.

Hughes was one of the reasons why a lot of neutrals still liked City even when others were put off by what they saw as the vulgar show of wealth from Sheikh Mansour in the transfer market. Hughes' quiet, dignified style was the antidote to that.

How it happened, ii

More in today's papers about how we came to replace Mark Hughes with Roberto Mancini. And it looks even worse for Garry Cook, Brian Marwood and Khaldoon al-Mubarak than it did yesterday. Initially, we thought that even though Khaldoon reached out to Mancini after the 1-1 with Hull, that a firm decision was not reached until after the loss at White Hart Lane. We now learn from Ian Ladyman that the decision to sack Hughes was taken after Jimmy Bullard's equaliser:

Last night it emerged a verbal agreement on Mancini’s three-and-a-half-year contract was reached on December 2, as City beat Arsenal in the Carling Cup, but the board wanted to delay the appointment until after tough games against Chelsea, Bolton and Tottenham.

This is bad enough: keeping on a condemned man just to make the new guy's job easier. Worse still is the news that Garry Cook could not find it within himself to break the news to Mark Hughes:

Confronted by Hughes before the game, City’s executive chairman Garry Cook was unable, or perhaps unwilling, to give the man he appointed in the summer of 2008 any assurances about his future.

Some reports, unconfirmed yesterday, suggested that the conversation became heated. Who could blame Hughes if it did?

Cook, after all, was the man who sat in the Abu Dhabi sunshine just five weeks or so ago and mentioned Hughes in the same breath as Michael Jordan and Muhammad Ali.

Or as James Ducker reports the same conversation:

“Am I being sacked?” Hughes asked the sheepish-looking chief executive. Cook was non-committal. The man who had told anyone who cared to listen that Hughes was the best young manager around did not have the decency to tell him the truth. Hughes had to wait until after the game to be told to pack his bags during a ten-minute conversation with al-Mubarak, the man who had driven through Mancini’s appointment.

A member of Hughes' coaching staff told the Mail:

‘It was weird,’ said one of Hughes’s inner circle yesterday. ‘Nobody would meet our gaze before kick-off. Our wives were upstairs having their lunch and we were beginning to realise we were effectively out of work. But nobody would actually tell us.’

There's a lot more in the papers today and I will come back to it later in the day. But this all reflects very poorly on those running MCFC.

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.

Hughes' statement

He's broken his silence via the LMA. And this is the most important bit:

I am extremely disappointed not to have been given the opportunity to see through my plans at the Club. At the beginning of the season I sat down with the owners and it was agreed that a realistic target for the season would be 6th place in the Barclays Premier League, or in the region of 70 points. All of this was communicated to the players and we all knew where we stood. Whilst everyone at the Club would obviously have wanted to see more wins, we were absolutely on target at the time of my dismissal. Only recently we had terrific victories against both Arsenal and Chelsea.

This is the key point here. Not only was Hughes not allowed to meet the targets set for him in the first place, but he was on course to meet those targets. This is what makes the decision to sack him in December not just a dumb one but a pretty devious one too.

Prediction watch

Some idiot writing about Hughes on Friday:

This is being reported as a 'pressure mounts on Hughes' story and while it is clearly embarrassing for the club (again, presuming that this Cook/van Nieuwenhuizen conversation took place) I don't think that it has any material difference on Hughes' position. We have heard many times before that Hughes is under pressure and that the board were thinking of sacking him - in September 2008 after the takeover itself, in December 2008 when we were in the relegation zone, and in May 2009 when we only finished tenth. At every instance the board have been more patient than people have expected, and more willing to give Hughes time. He doesn't have carte blanche, and may well not be the manager in 2010/11 but I would be shocked and stunned if the board broke their promise to give Hughes the entirety of this season to prove himself. It's not like we need European qualification to stay afloat. [Emphasis added]

How it happened

The big question this morning is why now? As I wrote before, I would have been less upset if Hughes was sacked to exploit a window of opportunity for the recruitment of a Hiddink or aMourinho. But he wasn't. He sacked for Roberto Mancini, a man with some time on his hands. Today's papers are naturally full of this story, and shed some light on the situation.

Jonathan Northcroft in the Sunday Times says that this was being planned for some time, and only the Arsenal and Chelsea wins recently kept Mark Hughes in the job:

Khaldoon, who represents Sheikh Mansour, the billionaire Abu Dhabi royal who owns City, sanctioned a change of manager last month after a run of seven consecutive league draws and first met with Mancini on December 3 but delayed appointing the Italian after Hughes masterminded wins over Arsenal and Chelsea.Wednesday’s abject defeat at Tottenham, however, sealed Hughes’ fate. Garry Cook, City’s chief executive and the club’s football administrator, Brian Marwood were thought to be influential in persuading Khaldoon that a change was necessary.

So it seems as if it was the draw with Hull City that drove the board away from Mark Hughes. Which is a big overreaction to what was admittedly a depressing result. But it seems clear from these reports that from that point onwards it was a matter of when not if. To be honest I would rather it was an impulsive reaction to the spineless defeat at White Hart Lane on Wednesday night. But it wasn't. They had been thinking it through for almost three weeks and they still managed to do the wrong thing.

The other point of interest concerns the role of Brian Marwood in all of this. It is reported in the News of the World that Hughes sees Marwood as the Brutus of this play:

The City chief [Hughes] had arrived at Eastlands yesterday meaning business - and not just on the field. He believes he has been stabbed in the back by Cook, football administrator Brian Marwood and technical development manager Brian Kidd...

He confronted Cook and Marwood before the game, accusing the pair of plotting his removal ever since their arrival at the club. Hughes has certainly been undermined in recent weeks, only discovering that the club were actively seeking a replacement when his assistant Niedzwiecki informed him.

A similar paragraph in the Mail on Sunday report reads:

Cook and his football adviser, Brian Marwood, finally decided that Hughes was not the man to lead the club after City's dismal 3-0 defeat by Tottenham and were authorised by chairman Khaldoon Al-Mubarak to move quickly to announce a successor in former Inter Milan manager Mancini.

It would be fascinating to learn just how far this decision was guided by Cook and Marwood, rather than coming from Khaldoon himself. Ultimately, it's information that we will never get access to. And I'm not going to lay into Cook and Marwood - tempting as it might be - because I just don't know how responsible they were for it. But whoever made it, the decision stinks. (On a side note, I am keen to defend Hughes but I think it's wrong for him to think that Marwood has stabbed him in the back. Marwood's job is to provide independent (that is, from Hughes) advice to Cook and Khaldoon using his football expertise. He does not, as far as I can tell, work for the manager. If he's told Khaldoon to sack Hughes then he's wrong, but he has no duty to Hughes. His whole point is his independence from the manager.)

The final point of interest is the players' reaction. We learnt in the 'papers that a delegation of them went to Khaldoon to plead for Hughes' job - and that they included Craig Bellamy, Shay Given and Gareth Barry:

The Welshman confirmed his departure to players amid emotional scenes in the City dressing room following a 4-3 home win against Sunderland, thanking them for their efforts during his 18-month tenure. This prompted a deputation of players led by Shay Given to march to the boardroom to confront Khaldoon and try to persuade him that Hughes should keep his job. They failed.

This is no surprise. The personal bond between Craig Bellamy and Mark Hughes is famously strong, and he is the player I am most worried sbout leaving soon. I suppose this also depends on where Mark Hughes goes next. But so much of this is unknowable for now. These reports, though, do allow us some insight into recent events at Manchester City. And it's all rather upsetting.

The end of Hughes

Well if you're reading this you probably know by now: Mark Hughes has been sacked as City manager and replaced by Roberto Mancini. This is the key sentence in the club statement:

“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.

Zabba on the EPL

He loves it:

"Every week is exciting in England - the stadiums are always full and even when you play away there is a great atmosphere because of we have so many of our fans there to watch us.

"It's different to what I was used to, but I love it. I can see why players want to play over here."

With his aggression and willingness to put the boot in he's well suited to playing over here. I think one area where Mark Hughes' astuteness has been underrated is that those players he has brought from abroad - Zabaleta, Vincent Kompany and Nigel de Jong, have all settled into the rhythms and practices of the Premier League very quickly. Contrast this with Eriksson's buys - Rolando Bianchi, Javi Garrido, Geovanni, some would even say Vedran Ćorluka and Elano - who often looked as if they lacked the physical strength and warrior spirit required to succeed in England.

Of course, it's worth pointing out that Eriksson largely had to buy from abroad due to financial constraints, and that both managers' recruitment policies existed to service different styles of play. But the point still stands: Hughes' imports don't even look like imports any more.

Ireland sides with Hughes over Elano

The most interesting thing to come out of the Abu Dhabi tour so far - Stephen Ireland has been talking about the mood in the camp last year, and how Elano failed to get behind Mark Hughes' changes:

"He [Hughes] had it tough," Ireland recalls. "Some players didn't want to be there. Some players just didn't want to buy into it. Elano and Jô, they didn't want to put in the extra effort and it wasn't like it was that hard. It wasn't like you were being run like a dog, just that it was more professional and more based on team spirit, and these players didn't want to get into that stuff."

Elano was subsequently sold to Galatasaray. "Under Sven, Elano got away with anything," Ireland continues. "It was Elano's world, to be honest. The gaffer came in and there were massive changes, and Elano couldn't adjust. He's a great guy, a nice guy, I got on great with him, and he's a very talented player, but he could have added a lot more to his game and been a lot better than what he is."

I appreciate that over the year I've done this subject to death. Just the other week I wrote about Hughes' comments on the issue. Just to recap, I side with Hughes entirely on these issues. The Brazilian clique were disgraceful last season in their attitude, and Hughes was right to rout them as he did. His personal battle with Elano - the embodiment of all that Hughes perceived to be wrong with the Eriksson regime - was one of the key stories of 2008/09. Stephen Ireland, while relatively successful under Eriksson, embodied the key features of the Hughes mentalité (hard work, making the most of your talent, physical fitness, winning attitude) just as Elano did the same for Eriksson (occassional brilliance, lapses of laziness, unworldliness, individuality etc.)

So for Stephen Ireland to be as vocal and as public in support for Hughes over Elano is no real surprise. But this sort of public grievance-airing is unusual, at least in Garry Cook's professionally run MCFC. So it does offer an interesting insight into what things were like last season. And it gives steel reinforcement to my belief that Hughes was right to sell Elano.

Hughes defends Bridge

After our left back was crucified by Alan Hansen on Match of the Day on Saturday evening:

"The pundits on Match of the Day just have an opportunity to nail individuals in the public domain," he said. "That process involves looking at incidents in games but not taking it as a whole. That's the role in life that they have decided to follow. There's a frustration, though, from our side when they don't go into particularly in-depth analysis. I'd question how many games they actually watch live, from the start to the conclusion of games. Everybody knows that's the case...

"Wayne is an experienced player who has won Premier League titles and been part of a Chelsea team at the top end," Hughes, right, said. "He understands what it's all about. At times individuals will make decisions that affect the team and sometimes you have to hold up your hand.But we're not going to do the same as the pundits because that's not what we're about. We look to analyse our mistakes and make sure, in future, we are better in similar situations. We won't single out individual players; that job is done by pundits."

Fair enough, I suppose. It's Hughes' job to defend our players in public. It's good for morale and part of the whole seige mentality that Hughes is keen to build. Hansen was right, though - Bridge was woeful on Saturday. And Lescott wasn't much better.

Hughes' authority

Mark Hughes has done an interview with Oliver Holt today, and he touches quite explicitly on one of the most interesting topics of the last few months: his authority within the club, particularly relating to the Brazilians.

The central point the interview makes, and one which I think is true, is that Hughes has more authority at the club now than he ever has done in the past. And this is because of his discomfiting the Brazilian clique, which was a clear insult to his position. The evidence is mountainous: Jô's unauthorised clubbing, Elano's public complaining over selection, Robinho's storming out of the Tenerife training camp, Jô and Elano's alleged accompanying of Tal Ben Haim in his complaint to Garry Cook about Hughes, and Robinho's flouting of the club dress code. And then, most importantly, their lack of application in training and their decision to pick and choose the games in which they tried. Yes, Elano and Robinho were exceptional in Autumn and again in Spring. But in winter they chose not to try, and that is a disgrace to the club.

This is a point that Hughes admits in the interview:

“Last year,” Hughes said, “there were occasions when I compromised my own standards and values and that didn’t sit comfortably with me so I knew it wouldn’t continue.

“Little details involving disciplinary indiscretions become big problems if you don’t address them but in the short term, I couldn’t do anything about it. It was the wrong time.

“The benefit of addressing those little details at that time would have caused problems. Instead of solving problems, they would have created bigger problems. That was why at times I let things go. Not to my comfort, I have to say."

I don't think he's ever been this honest about this issue. But that, I suppose, is a reflection of his strengthened position. Not only have Elano and Jô been moved on, but the introduction of Emmanuel Adebayor, Carlos Tévez, Gareth Barry and so forth means that Robinho no longer has a monopoly on stardom. He is no longer an automatic pick, no longer the only story at City, no longer surrounded by allies and no longer a rival to Hughes. He may go to Barcelona in 2010, he may not. But he does not have the status he once did. Hughes is the master now:

“Managing a football club is about building a culture. I would suggest a lot of other managers don’t get involved in trying to build a mentality but I don’t think you can be successful without it.

“It is about trying to get a work ethic and a way of thinking that enables you to be successful as a group. If you have too many pulling in the wrong direction, you have to cut them off.

“My values won’t be compromised in the future because we are in a different place now.”

This transformation - from a dysfunctional club, with the Hughes faction at war with the Brazilians, capable of occassional beautiful football but weak under pressure, to one with grit and nous, that wins on the road and grinds out results, is the only story at Manchester City this year. And Hughes' victory over the Brazilians is a central part of this.