'Suddenly everything is starting to click'

Daniel Taylor has a great article up on Guardian.co.uk about recent progress under Mancini. He covers a lot of ground: Swales, 'Cityitis', Mark Hughes, Carlos Tévez and Mancini himself. I could have quoted any or all of it but this is all good stuff:

But wait. Isn't this the club where Joe Royle once spoke of an illness called Cityitis? City never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, right? And yes, they still have to play United followed by Arsenal away, Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur at home and West Ham United away, so there is the potential for a late twist. Except April is no longer a time when City's supporters would get together, bristle with indignity, and complain bitterly about the way their team has performed over the past nine months.

This is why Carlos Tevez's assertion this week that the players were "not happy" with Roberto Mancini's training schedule felt so incongruous. Tevez was irked by Mancini's habit of organising double sessions, but this happens no more than once or twice a week. And, besides, whatever Mancini is doing seems to be working. The team look more organised, particularly in defence, where they have become notably less vulnerable to set pieces since the introduction of zonal marking. Of the 51 goals conceded this season, 29 came under Hughes in 21 games, with 22 in Mancini's 22 games.

Statistics like that mean the chief executive, Garry Cook, and the money men in Abu Dhabi can be forgiven for thinking that the Italian has justified his appointment so far. The players, by and large, sympathised with Hughes but, gradually, Mancini has broken down any friction that existed. He dealt swiftly and efficiently with the problem that was Robinho and what we are seeing now is an authentic football man taking a team and moulding them into his own personality.

It's a Friday afternoon so this is another link you should definitely follow up on; it's a really brilliant article.

Vote for MCFC in the Webby's

The official MCFC website has been quite brilliant - do take two minutes to vote for them to win the Webby People's Voice Award.

Do it now, do it here.

Our payroll

This is to point you towards SportingIntelligence's handy sports salary database. It's a very useful resource - compiling salary data from teams from all of the world's major sports, and showing their relative values. It finds that City's spending is not quite yet up there with the very biggest in world sports:

The figures for 2008-09 exist for most Premier League clubs and those are available in our database. The difference between the figures used in the ARGSS and the data for 2008-09 is moderate in most cases and wouldn’t alter most of the clubs’ rankings significantly if’d we had the full 2008-09 data set available now, and included it.

One exception is Manchester City’s wages, fueled by Abu Dhabi cash, which we calculate jumped from £1.4m per player per year in 2008 to £1.9m a year in 2008-09. However even this latest figure wouldn’t lift City any higher than sixth-highest payers in the Premier League for 2008-09 (from 10th in 2008), and wouldn’t put them inside the world’s top 50 teams (from No86), let alone inside the top 30.

As for the future; that’s a different matter. We can speculate that City’s wage bill will go through the roof in 2009-10 but as Manchester City themselves don’t even know that yet, nobody else can. Their bill could still alter significantly this season, for example, depending on performance bonuses (or not). As is explained in our methodology, guessing isn’t our game.

Do check it out.

Regeneration project announced

There had been rumours for some time, but today we heard that City are going to lead and pay for a major redevelopment project of the area around Eastlands:

A Joint Development Board (JDB) has been formed between the three parties, which will harness the respective strengths of the constituent members – Manchester City Council’s and New east Manchester’s land ownership, their proven track record in regeneration, and their access to public funding together with Manchester City Football Club’s commercial leverage with brand partners and history of investment in all aspects of the club’s development.

The agreement creates the opportunity for a long-term partnership between Manchester City Council, NEM and MCFC, to develop their mutual ambitions for the area. All of the parties share the desire for any commercial development to deliver long lasting economic and community growth to the east Manchester area.

It's good news in terms of the results it will bring about - the area around the ground could do with a bit of livening up, to say the least. More importantly, though, it underlines the long-term commitment of ADUG to MCFC. There's no avoiding the fact that if Sheikh Mansour decides he's bored of City and wants to do something better with his money we will be in a rather difficult position. And so evidence that he's not thinking along those lines is to be welcomed.

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?

Financial figures released

Quite an interesting story in the 'papers today - revealing that Sheikh Mansour has invested £395million in MCFC so far:

That huge and rapid expenditure is recorded in a document filed at Companies House on Christmas Eve, showing the cancellation of £305m which Mansour initially put into the club as loans. That includes some debt Mansour inherited when he took over the then stricken club from the former prime minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra, and his expenditure since on players including Robinho, Craig Bellamy, Nigel de Jong, Shay Given, Wayne Bridge, Gareth Barry, Roque Santa Cruz, Joleon Lescott, Carlos Tevez, Emmanuel Adebayor, Kolo Touré and other investment in the infrastructure at Eastlands.

According to the document, all £305m of the loans from Mansour's Abu Dhabi United Group were cancelled in return for new shares in the club. Mansour's group also bought further shares for £89.6m, to finance City's hugely increased wage bill and other expenditure this season.

City last night released figures from their official accounts for the year to 31 May 2009, which includes the first nine months of Mansour's ownership. The club recorded almost a tripling of the previous year's loss, to £92.6m, caused, it said in a statement, "primarily by increased playing staff costs".

This has got a lot of coverage in the media but I'm not sure how big a story it is in itself. I mean, everyone who follows football knows that Sheikh Mansour has ploughed an unprecedented volume of money into MCFC since he took over. And so the announcement of precisely how much money he has put in doesn't really seem to be here or there.

It is good to hear that the Sheikh's investment is in the form of shares rather than loans, though. We don't want nine figure loans to pay off should anything untoward happen.

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.

Telegraph: Cook in Hiddink enquiry

Quite big news in the Daily Telegraph this morning: it carries a claim from Cees Van Nieuwenhuizen (Guus Hiddink's agent), claiming that Garry Cook has enquired about Guus Hiddink joining MCFC at the end of the season:

“Yes, I did [speak to Cook]. But Guus is happy with Russia. Definitely,” Van Nieuwenhuizen said. “I had a call because I have been working with Garry for 12 years since we worked together at Nike. But I have received calls from all over the world about Guus. There has also been an approach from Juventus.

“He (Cook) asked me if it would be worthwhile having a meeting to discuss the future and what might happen next summer. But I told him that Guus was contracted to Russia."

Interesting stuff. It's come out today that Hiddink is likely to stay with the Russian national side but that isn't really the point here. The simple fact that Garry Cook - and this is presuming that van Nieuwenhuizen is telling the truth - is sounding out potential managers for 2010/11 is fascinating. But then if we are to sack Hughes this May then Hiddink will naturally be near the top of any wishlist, and it only makes sense to lay the preparation now.

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.

New deal with Etisalat

Another commercial benefit of our being owned by Sheikh Mansour: a deal with the UAE's main internet provider, Etisalat. Garry Cook is delighted:

“The profile of the club is already growing globally, and the ability to effectively expand this growth with tailored communications forms the core of our agreement with Etisalat,” he declared.

“This strategic opportunity allows us to connect to passionate football fans around the Middle East and African regions, providing customized Manchester City content through mobile communications channels.”

The higher our profile and our turnover the better, in a sense. A bit of a shame, though, that Etisalat bars access to all Israeli and 'anti-Islamic' websites (according to Wikipedia, I admit), and that it uses spyware on its customers BlackBerrys. But then if I was serious about moral objections to this sort of thing then I would have refused to watch them when owned by Shinawatra. Which, of course, I didn't.

Mills on KK and Pearce

Former City star Danny Mills has an interesting interview in The Sun today where he reveals what working for Kevin Keegan and Stuart Pearce was like. Neither comes off too well, with Pearce accused of being too controlling and Keegan of being insufficiently so:

"At City, Kevin Keegan had no discipline in his training sessions.

"Players turned up late but there were no punishments. I told him 'You cannot let players keep turning up late' and he said 'I don't like fining players'. I said 'You fine them once, they won't do it again'.

"Stuart Pearce came in and was terrible. He only liked players he could control. He got rid of David James, Ben Thatcher, Claudio Reyna and tried to get rid of Joey Barton.

"From the outside it was 'Psycho - Stuart Pearce - don't mess with him'. But if you stood up and had a go, he didn't know how to respond. When he took his daughter's toy horse into the dugout, the lads thought 'Hang on a minute... '.

"Also, he didn't have a big enough personality to deal with big players - and still doesn't."

Future spending

One interesting issue over our future development is whether we will repeat the mass turnover of players and money seen in summer 2009 in future transfer windows. Mark Hughes said yesterday that last summer - eight new players at a combined cost of £140million - would not be repeated in future windows:

"What people must understand is that our business in the last window was unprecedented. That will not happen again.

"This notion that we will throw money at whatever player, that is not the case.

"We do not feel we need to go into the market to the extent we did in the last two windows.

"It about looking at players for areas of the team that still need strengthening. Those are the ones we will target. It will not be wholesale comings and goings, I can assure you of that."

This suggests that he is broadly happy with the make up of the team as it is now, and that future changes will be at the fringes of the squad rather than to its core. Which, to me, is a relief. And I don't mean that regarding the quality of the team. I think that the current squad will certainly be enough to meet our target of top six this season, and probably even for the stretch target of top four. And with a few big additions in key areas in the next two or three windows (like him or him or even him) we may well be good enough to go and win something.

But that's not quite what I'm getting at. As exciting as the last few years supporting City has been (and I'm counting the Thaksin era here as well as the ADUG one) the constant change in personnel has been rather disconcerting. We signed eight new players (combined cost £40m) in summer 2007, three new players in January 2008 (£9m), seven new in summer 2008 (£77m total), four in January 2009 (roughly £45m total) and then eight for £140m in summer 2009.

There's clearly a problem with this. Being a football fan is obviously primarily about emotional investment in the club itself. Whether it's Carlos Tévez or Carlo Nash you support the players because they play for City. But this does not mean that emotional bonds with players specifically do not exist or do not matter. (Perhaps the only reason I worried about the departure of Richard Dunne was that he had a relationship with the fans with roots in the Joe Royle era, and that without him we were a team of players brought in the last few years.) If we are to turn over the squad every six months we will reach a point where fans barely have any relationship with any of our players.

Take the current squad: of all the players signed under Hughes I have only really taken Zabaleta, Kompany, de Jong and Bellamy to heart so far. (Wright-Phillips is different, being a reacquaintance with an old friend.) As much as I revel in seeing this summer's buys pulling on our shirts and winning us points I'm not yet at the point of being able to embrace them as our own. (Tell me if you feel differently.) These things take time. If we stick with the core of the current squad I am sure that I will grow to love them, and will delight in their successes. But if we buy a whole new team every six months, it won't quite feel the same.

Sheikh Mansour completes takeover

From the official site:

Manchester City can confirm that a transaction involving 10% of the shares of Manchester City Football Club Limited has been completed.

The 10per cent of shares, previously owned by Worldwide Investments Limited has now been transferred to ADUG, the wholly owned company of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, for an undisclosed sum. As a result of the transaction Manchester City Football Club is now 100 per cent owned by His Highness Sheikh Mansour.

Cause for optimism

Martin Samuel, who is more supportive of the ADUG project at City than most, has a rather positive piece about us in the Mail today:

The better team still won at Old Trafford on Sunday, but City's performance demanded respect. They have won here in recent years, but it has always been in the manner of the underdog, raising their game to meet the occasion.

On Sunday they lost, but as equals. Do not be fooled by Manchester United's domination of the second half. United can safely expect to dominate every game at home, regardless of the opposition.

The fact that Manchester City drew level after going behind on three occasions, the fact that Craig Bellamy scored the two best goals of the game, the fact that it took United until 16 seconds from the final whistle to put the result beyond doubt are all tiny victories for Mark Hughes and his men.

And that is what City are about this season: tiny victories.

Siege mentality

Henry Winter makes an important point today:

Rather than damage a club, moments like this can forge a togetherness if a manager is as canny as Hughes. He has heard many defiant speeches in the dressing rooms at Old Trafford and now he must deliver one of his own, fostering a siege mentality in the very best Sir Alex Ferguson tradition.

It is time for Hughes to rail against the outside world, to tell his players that the Football Association, Premier League and media are against them.

Inside the City dressing room, it will not register that Adebayor actually deserves three matches on the sidelines for cynically raking Robin van Persie.

A siege mentality is a characteristic of most successful teams, particularly ones as unpopular as we are. The better we do the more people are going to dislike us (and we're not exactly the neutral's favourite now) and so all Hughes can do is really turn this to our advantage.

Academy revamped

Following the departure of Jim Cassell and promotion of Andy Welsh, City have made a new appointment: former player Brian Kidd, as Technical Development Manager.

He's an old friend of Hughes: he was Assistant Manager at Manchester United when Hughes was a player there in the 1990s, and I imagine that this appointment was made with much input from the manager.

Brian Marwood (Football Administration Officer for those who had forgotten) had this to say:

“Brian has vast experience at both Club and International level and will help maintain the excellent development programme we have in place at the Academy,” stressed Marwood.

“As a top class coach he was much in demand when it became clear he wasn’t going to stay at Portsmouth and we are delighted that Brian has chosen to come and work with us. I know he scored nearly 50 goals in his playing days at Maine Road and is greatly admired and respected amongst our fans."

In a week when Richard Dunne left City, it is good that some bonds between the club today and the club of previous years are being re-formed.

MCFC accused of poaching

Quite a big news story breaking this morning - City have been accused by Rennes of poaching teenager Jérémy Hélan. This is obviously in light of RC Lens' successful case against Chelsea regarding Gaël Kakuta and Le Havre's attempt to hold Manchster United to account over Paul Pogba. Rennes' Technical Director Pierre Dréossi said:

'Manchester City must now realise the consequences of their attitude in the Hélan case as it is even more illegal than (Gael) Kakuta.

'We have referred this to FIFA. For us it was strange to have no discussion from City and now, in the week after the FIFA declaration on Chelsea, I would hope that it will be the same thing for Manchester City.

'Kakuta signed up for just a possibility of a full contract. For Hélan there was definitely one there, under the terms of the pre-contract agreement, because he had played for his country.

'Manchester United said it was not possible to negotiate with us but for City now this is dangerous, though we are not expecting a decision from FIFA for perhaps several years.'

Of course, Dréossi isn't exactly a disinterested observer here. But it does look like a potential long term problem for the club. I don't know the details here, but it's probably safe to say that Chelsea never thought the Kakuta case would end as it did. Poaching teenagers is pretty unsavoury and I suppose I'd rather City didn't do it. But the teams we're trying to compete it all do it. And in the cases of Cesc Fàbregas and potentially Kiko Macheda, it seems to work rather well. It's all in the game.

One year on

Today was quieter than expected. No dramatic deals, either in or out, only the inevitable departure of Tal Ben Haim and the probable end of Richard Dunne's time at City. It was a placid end to a transformative summer: eight players in, at a combined cost of roughly £120million, and a squad unlike anything I've seen at City in my lifetime.

Today was chance, then, for reflection on the events of one year ago. Of course, reflection on 1 September 2008 hasn't exactly been lacking over the last twelve months. It is impossible to think seriously about any City-related issue without confronting the enormity of the ADUG takeover and its implications. But today - both the anniversary of the takeover, and the end of of the period of squad-rebuilding that it led to, makes it feel like the right time.

The central point must be this: that the ADUG takeover is the most significant in the modern history of MCFC. That it has changed MCFC quite irrevocably, that the whole purpose of the football club had been re-programmed. After the promotion season of 2001/02 a growing sense had developed around the club that all that could be hoped for was to keep the ship on an even keel. Under Stuart Pearce merely retaining Premier League status was the pinnacle of achievement. But with the takeover the club's whole purpose shifted to an enterprise: the pursuit of a clearly defined goal, with progress along one path in that direction and the means to do so.

In that one event, all the old uncertainties were shattered: the future path of the club was clear, the only question was of timings. We have now travelled one year along the ADUG path, and it's been thrilling. The two-fold promise - stability of management, radical change of playing staff - has been delivered. Having struggled to deal with the changes last season we have started 2009/10 at a gallop; with a team made up of players with the winning mentality and Premier League experience necessary to suceed, founded on the twin pillars of the Premier League's most consisten goalkeeper and the lynchpin of England's midfield, each of whom joined City after years at their previous clubs - bought, like nearly our whole team - with ADUG money.

I don't know where we're going to be in a year's time. Probably balancing our new Premier and Europa League campaigns, with much the same squad as this year - three or four new players at most. But we'll be one year further down the straight road to success, the one we started on in September 2008.

Groundwork completed

One of the key themes of the ADUG/Cook/Hughes era thus far has been investment - not just in the playing staff - but in the club's infrastructure. Medical and training facilities have received long overdue improvements, as Hughes' experience and ambition have met with the ADUG cash to allow us, finally, to move beyond the old Wardle/Bernstein/Lee club groundwork.

This is something that Hughes talked about a lot last season - that our failure to make swift progress was, in part, down to these necessary, but unsettling changes in both players and infrastructure. Now, of course there is a strategic element here - we did underachieve last season, and of course the manager will use an excuse where possible to explain that. But in two very revealing profiles of the club by Martin Samuel and Ian Herbert in today's papers, it has emerged that this work is done and the club is now ready to turn it to our advantage.

From Ian Herbert:

A medical facility approaching the size of a cottage hospital is another addition to a complex which the England team doctor, Ian Beasley, esteems the best in the country, and its 10 beds and massage facilities are an accoutrement the City manager Mark Hughes has found more valuable than he would have hoped with his signings going down like flies.

That's as maybe. The significance of the training facility, part of an £8m investment in the infrastructure of Manchester City by Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed al-Nahyan in the close season, is the signal it provides that the club – derided, loathed and ridiculed by so many – are actually at the start of something refreshingly new and not abominably nouveau as so many want to have it.

And see Hughes' reaction in the Martin Samuel article:

City, at that time, had four treatment tables in the medical centre serving every player at the club, from the first team to the academies. It meant that after training sessions there could be a queue to rival an NHS waiting room; and last season City had plenty of injuries.

‘When we get down sometimes, if results are not going our way and things are not progressing as quickly as we would like, we look around here and realise how far we’ve come,’ said Hughes.

‘This place was not fit for purpose. There was no care here, no pride, it was not a building in which a professional could do his best work. When I compared it to what I had at Blackburn Rovers, for instance, it felt like stepping back in time. Since we walked through the door it has changed beyond all recognition.’

As a fan, we can only take the management on their word on this sort of thing. But it does sound like good news.

Shindler

Most City fans will by now have seen Colin Shindler's sorrowful essay on his detachment from City, from the Daily Mail on Monday. His key point is that he now feels 'as if I can honestly say I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't support Manchester City.' And this is down to the new foreign owners:

And now, when they ran out of money, my beloved City took to the streets and lifted her skirt at every passing lecherous bloke with five quid in his pocket.

Mancunians sold my love to a man from Thailand who was on the Most Wanted list of Amnesty International. It didn't faze the marketing manager he appointed, who thought Thaksin Shinawatra was a good bloke with whom to play golf.

Too many fans looked no further than the money. Shinawatra's money was all smoke and mirrors. At least this Abu Dhabi lot have got money, but that's all they've got. They've taken my love who Shinawatra turned into a whore, cloaked her in the finest of silk dresses and doused her in the most seductive of Arabian fragrances.

I don't recognise her any longer. She might look beautiful but she's rotten at the core. I still love her. How could I not after all these years? The opposite of love is indifference and I'm certainly not indifferent to what happens to Manchester City.

Colin Shindler is one of City's most famous fans, certainly in the sense of being famous by virtue of his being a City fan - unlike Noel Gallagher and Ricky Hatton who are famous for their achievements elsewhere. So it's worth reading what he has to say. I think, though, that is far out of touch with the feelings of most City fans.

His central contention seems to be that the soul of the club is inherently tied up with the ownership. Once the ownership leaves Manchester, the soul goes with it. If you accept that, his argument makes sense. I'm just not sure I do though. There is so much more to the soul of Manchester City than the money men. If anything, they are merely the foundations, or the enablers, which allow the soul-carrying aspects of the football club: the fans, the shirt, the young players - the sport itself - to exist. And I don't think there can be much doubting that those areas are stronger than they have been for some time.

The fans' engagement with the club - the new website, £5 tickets for Hamburg, the Open Day tomorrow - seems as strong as it has ever been. The shirts are beautiful - and closer to anything from the eras Shindler describes than we have had for some time. And the Player of the Season last year was, for the first time in ages, someone City had raised and nurtured in our own Academy. We have just given a five year deal to a local lad we've raised ourselves, and who has it within him to be a great captain of the club. Then there's Micah Richards and Michael Johnson who, despite difficult 2008s, can, with a bit of focus, still grow into City regulars. And the football itself is about to be better than anything I have seen in my lifetime.

So I just can't bring myself to agree with Colin Shindler's contention that foreign ownership has destroyed the soul of the club. If he was making a point about the recent high spending I might be able to see his point. (I don't think our spending is morally wrong or anything, but I do think it rather distorts the competitive balance of the EPL. But that's a whole different issue.) But Shindler says nothing like that at all. So I must admit to finding myself a little bit bemused by a writer for whom I have real respect. Just because what we're seeing is so alien to us, it just doesn't follow that we all feel alienated by it.