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.

David Conn on behind the scenes changes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Conn on the last days of Thaksin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Conn on Abu Dhabi motivations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Changing the language

Garry Cook has today talked about the importance of changing the language around the club:

"There were two phrases which struck me when I first came here - 'typical City' and 'City till I die'," he said in the Manchester Evening News.

"They tell you two things about the personality of the culture.

"'Typical City' says to me, 'We're not very good, but it's OK'. It means you are embarrassed by mistakes - you shouldn't be, because we all make mistakes.

"It's also an excuse for when you do make a mistake. You can just say, 'Well, that's us'.

He certainly has a point. Some of Garry Cook's management speak can grate slightly, but I think on this sort of key issue he's absolutely right. The phrase 'typical City' not only represents a long-ingrained culture of failure but also perpetuates it. And to combat this, we need a two pronged approach: not only to improve our football, but to improve the discourse as well - so that success is presumed and defeats require explanation. While Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool do certainly have better playing squads than the other Premier League teams, their winning mentality does also have a causal role in their continued success.

And so creating such a winning mentality at City is a central part of Cook and Mark Hughes' mission.

It's also worth pointing out that this is not simply a post-takeover analysis from Cook. In an interview with Henry Winter during the final weeks of the discredited Thaksin regime, he said this:

“We’ll be as big as Manchester United. If I didn’t have that goal, I wouldn’t be here. Can we win the Premier League? Yes. Will we? It might take a bit longer. Can we win the Champions League? Growing up at Nike, you don’t sit around saying, 'Can we?’ You say, 'We will’.

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

The idea that City needed 'a superstar', rather than a whole team of them, sounds rather antiquated now.

Daniel Taylor reveals January transfer plans

From his article in Wednesday's Guardian:

Al Fahim had talked of making a £135m bid for Cristiano Ronaldo and raiding Arsenal for Cesc Fábregas, but Hughes will have more moderate targets and plans to resurrect his interest in Roque Santa Cruz of Blackburn, as well as looking for a new left-back and a goalkeeper to provide competition for Joe Hart. "We are sensible people and when it comes to a lot of the talk, forget everything that has been said in the past," said Al Mubarak. "We are genuine people, and we want to develop this club in a sustainable manner. Nothing rash is going to happen, we are not going to do crazy stuff."

His record on City stories is not as good as Ian Ladyman, but probably as good as Ian Herbert at The Independent. He had the Ben Haim story before anyone else, but was weeks too early with Michael Johnson's new deal.

This certainly sounds plausible. Left back, centre forward and in goal are the three areas needing reinforcement more than others. I'll blog about this issue soon. I think some City fans may want to see someone more glamorous than Santa Cruz arriving: Huntelaar, Benzema, Podolski or whoever. But Hughes' record on signings thus far has been pretty good.

Board makeup not yet revealed

Having learnt that ownership of the club was to switch to Sheikh Mansour on Tuesday, we can only presume that this has taken place.

There has been no official confirmation as such, only the publication on mcfc.co.uk of a letter from Sheikh Mansour, which had been on mancityfuture.com since Sunday. But the implication seemed to be that the deal had been agreed and would simply take place on Tuesday, with no more confirmation needed.

Unfortunately, Sheikh Mansour's letter said that there would be no imminently forthcoming announcement regarding City's new board:

Khaldoon and I have agreed that the we will not be making any more announcements for a while (Italics mine - JPB) as we really now need to sit down with the manager, Executive Chairman and key staff and put together plans that will, over time, get the Club to where we want it to be. That is the stage we are entering now and as anyone who runs a business knows, this involves a lot of listening, and a lot of talking to many stakeholders and research and discussion before plans can be announced.

So we can only presume that the takeover has fully taken place.

ADUG back Hughes and Academy

Only good news in an article from UAE based newspaper The National.

It repeatedly quotes an 'ownership team source' as saying the following:

That ADUG recognise Mark Hughes to be a man with “outstanding man-management and motivational qualities, an amazing eye for talent and the ability to build a team to compete with the best.”

Regarding the successes of the Academy: “The importance of building further on the success of this part of the club [the Academy] simply cannot be overstated. Do not forget that the most successful period of Manchester United’s recent history was based to a large extent on graduates of their academy.”

And in a critique of Dr Sulaiman al-Fahim's bluster on transfers, and his not being on the board: “In Abu Dhabi, we prefer to go about business in an understated, pragmatic and patient manner. Brashness is simply not our natural game.”

If these claims are true, it's very good news. Backing Hughes, building around Academy players, and careful and cautious transfers are all things I would like to see not just because I like our current manager and current squad and don't want to be seen to be vulgar; but because it's genuinely the best way of being successful.

On Transfer Policy, 1

Following recent events at West Ham and Newcastle, this week's central question in football is:

Who ought, in a Premier League club, to control transfer policy?

This is an area where people draw a distinction between the traditional British way of doing things: managerial control (naturally simple, clear, honest, common-sensical), posited against the European way: led by a Sporting Director/Director of Football/Technical Director/whatever (complex, inefficient, bureaucratic, shadowy, open to corruption).

And as fun as it is to mock those making that distinction in such stereotypical terms (I'm looking at you, Gerry Francis), I do think it's generally true. The two best managers of my lifetime (these two) are famous for having total control of transfer policy. Would the Glazers appoint an Executive Director (Football) to recruit players behind Ferguson's back? Would Peter Hill-Wood sell Arsenal's first choice centre and left backs to Sunderland behind Wenger's back? Would they fuck.

The lack of transfer control was one of Jose Mourinho's main complaints against Roman Abramovich. Both Frank Arnesen and Avram Grant were appointed with jurisdiction over scouting and transfer policies. Mourinho asked Abramovich for Eto'o and was rewarded with Shevchenko. At Tottenham Hotspur, it is Damien Comolli's job to buy players. On deadline day they sold Berbatov and he failed to get a replacement. This from the man who brought us Adel Taarabt and Kevin-Prince Boateng.

There are clubs who do well with transfer chiefs. All the big Italian and Spanish clubs do this, and until very recently their post-Heysel superiority in European competition was unchallenged by the English. Even worse than interfering directors of football (who tend to at least know something about the game), are interfering Presidents. The Guardian's Daniel Taylor wrote a crucial article this week, about the cautionary tale of Florentio Perez:

...an egomaniac who, in his final three years, spent €440m (£358m) on 20 players, fired six coaches and four sporting directors and won nothing - Madrid's longest run without a trophy for more than half a century.

Perez spent all his money on the most exciting attacking talent going: Michael Owen, Robinho and Julio Baptista. Out of the door went Claude Makelele, because "his technique is average, he lacks the speed and skill to take the ball past opponents, and ninety percent of his distribution either goes backwards or sideways." Taylor draws the obvious, but important, comparison between Perez and Dr Sulaiman al-Fahim.

In City's case, Dr Sulaiman Al Fahim has already spoken about trying to sign Ronaldo, Thierry Henry, David Villa, Ronaldo (the tubby Brazilian version), Mario Gómez and Fernando Torres. Revealingly, he did not mention one defender or goalkeeper and only one midfielder, Arsenal's Cesc Fábregas.

If there is a bad way to spend £500 billion on footballers, surely this is it. I don't know how much Dr al-Fahim knows about football, but I hope knows enough to be aware of Mark Hughes' record in the transfer market. This is not Kevin '£3.5m for Vuoso' Keegan, Stuart '£6m for Samaras' Pearce or even Sven-Goran '£8.8m for Bianchi' Eriksson. At Blackburn he brought in Benni McCarthy for £2.5m, Roque Santa Cruz for £3.5m and Christopher Samba for £400k.

I'll try to wait until May to pass judgement on Vincent Kompany, Tal Ben Haim, Shaun Wright-Phillips or Pablo Zabaleta, but I'm quite confident they'll be successful. Jô and Robinho are slightly different and ought not to be judged in the same way. Trusted with our new found petro-billions, I don't think Hughes will lose any of his judgement. Not only are not all players as effective as they look on YouTube (who knows whether our new Number 10 will be or not), but there can be potential downsides to stockpiling megastars. Disharmony in the camp, imbalance in the team, lack of mutual understanding, etc.

The more thought one gives this, the more obvious the conclusion is. If Dr al-Fahim wants anything approaching the success he demands for City, all transfer policy should be left with Hughes and his team.

I'll blog about how likely this is tomorrow.

Dr al-Fahim BBC interview

The new owner, due diligence permitting, Dr Sulaiman al-Fahim, has done an interview with BBC.

The big news is that he claims to be in discussion with 'three or four players' he is interested in bringing to City. Because he only made the agreement with Thaksin's people last night, time is limited but he said he was hopeful to close one deal tonight. One player is said to be in England, and two in Europe.

I blogged earlier about my hope that Dr al-Fahim pledges support to Hughes. And he seemed to do exactly that in the interview. With regard to transfers he said:

"We will support him [Hughes] by bringing in better players. And it's his job to really manage them and to transfer the club to a new level."

On Hughes' future:

"It's a big mistake if I were to change the manager and the board members. I'm not there to change just for the sake of changing."

Dr al-Fahim will fly to London on Thursday, where he will meet everybody.

"I am there to support the manager to bring in better players. We will have a discussion with him. What exactly he needs as a manager to support the club in terms of players."