Mail: Marwood in talks for Moses

An article in Monday's Daily Mail says that we are trying to sign Crystal Palace's highly rated young winger Victor Moses in January:

Brian Marwood, the Eastlands football administrator, held initial talks over a potential move for Moses last week but was taken aback by the club's £5million valuation.

But Marwood wants to hold a second round of talks with Palace this week and will head down to Selhurst Park on Saturday to run the rule over Moses when Palace take on Bristol City in the Championship.

Moses' agent Tony Finnigan has said that a move is likely:

'In my view Victor is worth £5m and maybe even more but I have nothing to do with what Palace will receive for Victor Moses. But from a personal point of view and as a former Palace player I hope they get the amount they desire for him.

'I hope Moses goes on to be the next household name - and he has the talent to do that - but at the moment Palace have to get a figure they are happy with.

'I sincerely hope the player I work with and represent can enable Palace to secure their financial future.'

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?

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.

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.

New club appointments

From mcfc.co.uk

Graham Wallace, Chief Financial & Administration Officer

Responsible for leading and managing all Club financial matters in addition to overseeing the Information Technology, Human Resources, Legal and Administration functions. He joins the Club from IMG, where he is Senior Vice President of Finance for IMG’s worldwide Sports Media and Entertainment businesses.

David Pullan, Brand and Marketing Officer

Responsible for growing the Club’s supporter base. He joins the Club from Aegis Media, where he was President of Isobar Global Client Management.

Brian Marwood, Football Administration Officer

Responsible for supporting the Football Manager by building world-leading football infrastructure which will meet Mark Hughes’ requirements in terms of academy liaison, overseeing of medical, sports sciences and performance analysis, talent identification and player support.

As Danny rightly suggests, 'Marwood appears to very much be a 'Cook man', so does his appointment then suggest further evidence of Hughes's position being secure for the long term?' Given that Cook is effectively tied to Hughes, I'd like to think that bringing in Cook's former colleagues to work with him suggests a commitment to the current management structures beyond the 2oo8/09 season. But, as a pro-Hughes City fan, I may just be reading more into this than I ought to.

Winter on Marwood

Interesting stuff on the role of our new 'Football Administrator' from Henry Winter today:

The board confirmed that Brian Marwood, formerly of Arsenal and England, will arrive from Nike to coordinate football administration, liaising with the dressing room, academy, sports science department and even organising protection for players’ houses while they are away on European duty (a sensitive issue in the North West after attacks on the properties of United and Liverpool players).

He is not a technical director. Repeat not. Knowing he would have to explain Marwood’s role to Hughes, Cook used the apt analogy of a winger serving a centre-forward. In City’s new chain of command, Marwood reports to Hughes. A popular figure within football, Marwood could prove a real ally for City’s manager. Along with Bellamy, Nigel de Jong and Shay Given, Marwood represents a smart signing by City’s executive chairman. Furious at losing such a valued employee, Nike’s top brass went ballistic with Cook.

The article also confirms that Garry Cook has aligned himself with Hughes before the club's owners.