Positive injury update

Good news regarding our injured trio of Roque Santa Cruz, Michael Johnson and Vincent Kompany. Mark Hughes talked about all three of them today, saying of RSC:

“We're happy with him, as I've said before we have to give him the time he needs, and he is working really hard. He's desperate to play, but we're holding him back a bit because we have a break at the moment.

“The internationals actually come at a good time for him, psychologically he's not missing any more games but he's adding to his fitness. When Roque is ready he will be involved, we want to get him in a City shirt and out there playing because he is going to be a big asset for us. With our options up front, we can give him the time he needs.

“We're looking at the long-term with him, if we introduced him too early we could still lose him on a longer basis. Roque understands our thinking over this, he's a bit frustrated but we will all benefit from it.”

Of VK:

“Vinnie’s doing well; we are having to try to keep the reins on him too,” reported the boss. “The bone in the toe needs the time it deserves to heal, if you don't do that then the player is compromised. It will heal in its own time, but he is pain-free and raring to go.”

And of MJ:

“We're positive, Michael saw a specialist a few weeks back, was very happy afterwards and since then we have been building up his fitness. The approach we are taking with Michael is that we want to give him games to give him a base level of fitness,” explained Hughes.

“He's been out for a year; if we rush him back he could break down. We'll get him involved with the reserves, and if we get him and the other two up and running in the next month or so it would be like three new signings for us.”

Given how many good players we have on the bench now our competition for places is only going to get more intense when these three get back.

Dixon praises Barry

There's a very interesting article by Match of the Day pundit and City fan Lee Dixon on the BBC website, about our performance at Fratton Park. He picks Gareth Barry out for particular praise:

But the victory at Fratton Park, while not a perfect performance by any means, showed the importance of having a strong, disciplined midfielder in Barry.

The Englishman was all over the park on Sunday - right-back, left-back, covering the back four at all times. That meant that when City's forwards lost the ball, the defence was not exposed like they were at times last season.

That balance is the vital difference for any side, and City are fortunate to have snapped up a player in Barry who I believe would strengthen any of the top four teams in the league.

He also compares our fluidity of attacking movement to that of Dixon's former club:

At Fratton Park, they employed Emmanuel Adebayor as the key frontman, with Carlos Tevez, Bellamy, Wright-Phillips and Ireland supporting and inter-changing behind.

There's something Arsenal-esque about City this season. All the forwards swap positions, drift wide, drop deep, as well as burst behind the defence. They have a similar fluidity and movement - even if they are not quite up to Arsenal's standards on that front just yet.

The whole article is positive and worth reading.

Fitting

The departure of Richard Dunne - the embodiment of pre-ADUG Manchester City - is the most striking symbol yet of the new, post-takeover Manchester City. How fitting that it should take place one year to the day after its predecessor as the most striking symbol of the new City - the arrival of Robinho.

Who knows which symbolic event will take place on 1 September 2010? Which aspect of the new MCFC will it even by symbolising?

Norfstander's vox pops

I'd commend to you the 'vox pops' feature being run on the very impressive Norfstander at the moment. It's a series of relevant questions sent round various online blues, including Danny, author of Bitter and Blue, and Ric, overlord of Bluemoon, and, well, me.

But it's interesting stuff. Links to parts one, two and three.

Sylvinho talks up Robi

Praise from his new teammate:

"He is really happy that the club has now got Adebayor and Tevez, because that helps him a lot."

"It puts this club on a different level, and it does the same for Robinho. He is one of the best players in Brazil and plays for the national team, so this kind of help will be really important to him."

"I don't like to compare players, or clubs or coaches. In the world there are five or six different players who are at a high level, and Robinho is one of them."

It will be interesting to see if Robinho and Sylvinho strike up quite the same friendship as Robinho did with his former Santos teammate Elano. One Brazilian commenter - Da C.I.A. - suggested that there might be tension between Robinho and Sylvinho as the latter played for Corinthians - Santos' great rivals in São Paulo - never mind the Barcelona / Real Madrid rivalry, as well there might be with Tévez - who spent two years at Corinthians long after Sylvinho had left.

Dunne departs

This afternoon the club confirmed that Richard Dunne has left City, after nine years and 345 appearances, to sign for Aston Villa. Having recruited two new centre-backs for a combined price of almost £40million, Dunne's position in the first team was lost. And once Nedum Onuoha's future at the club was affirmed with a new five year contract, it was clearly untenable to have the club captain as fourth choice centre half.

And so the City career of our greatest servant since Ian Brightwell, if not of the whole modern era is over. A man brought to the club by Joe Royle who saw off not only Royle himself but also Kevin Keegan, Stuart Pearce and Sven-Göran Eriksson. He represented a rare pillar of stability in an unstable decade, forming a defensive partnership with his predecessor as captain Sylvain Distin which was the only thing which saved us from relegation under both Keegan and Pearce. Four consecutive Player of the Season awards - the last in 2007/08 - demonstrate that he was the one consistently good player in a period otherwise defined by mediocrity - after the fading of Ali Benarbia, before the arrival of Elano.

Stability, consistency, leadership, bloody-mindedness - the sense that, for once, the cliché about running through flames for the badge was true - these were Dunne's qualities. More than almost any other player to have made a significant contribution in recent times - Gerard Wiekens or Kevin Horlock excepted - he made the very most of his abilities. Had things been different he certainly could have played another four or five years for City and forced his way into the top ten all time most appearances.

But, as with everything else connected with City, this all change on 1 September 2008. From that point on Manchester City and Richard Dunne's paths started to diverge. For Sheikh Mansour merely staying up was not enough. Nor was making the most of one's talent. Once MCFC embarked on its new enterprise, it was clear that effort and experience were not enough. Necessary, of course, as they are to any successful football club. But nowhere near sufficient: what was now needed was excellence. And, as heroic as Dunne has been for City, real excellence always lay just beyond him. When Mark Hughes decided to bring in two new centre-halves this summer who combined Dunne's effort and experience with excellence of their own - in the £14m

Kolo Touré and the £22m Joleon Lescott - the ending was writen.

He is, then, the highest profile casualty of the new regime so far. Richard Dunne symbolised the MCFC of the 2000s like no-one else. Not just for his 300 appearances, his captaincy and his four Player of the Season trophies - but because he embodied the spirit and achievements of those years - passionate and determined but never excellent. But what are ADUG, Garry Cook and Mark Hughes trying to do to City if not to cast off and leave behind the mediocrity of those years? Dunne was no longer the one man stopping City from going down, but was one man slowing down our going up. And so, to move the club forward, to leave behind the unsuccessful past, to detach City from its past mediocrity, Richard Dunne - the greatest symbol of pre-ADUG MCFC - had to go. He now takes up his rightful place alongside Horlock, Shaun Goater and Uwe Rösler in the pantheon of departed heroes. The ADUG revolution rolls on regardless.

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.

No move for Bentley

Sky Sports News' Chief News Reporter Bryan Swanson just said that MCFC have said on the record that there will be no move for David Bentley, either on loan or permanently, and that our transfer business for the summer is over.

Good news.

Petrov out, Bentley in?

The big story today is that we are in talks with Spurs over a Martin Petrov plus cash deal for David Bentley.

Like most City fans, I am not up for this at all. Not only is the prospect of David Bentley in blue quite unappealing - he was unambiguously a bad apple before his recent drink-driving conviction, but it seems like astonishingly bad business for the club. The deal rumoured (it may turn out differently) was to take Bentley for Martin Petrov and £10million!

The problem here is not our end of the deal; we don't need the money and, having played Craig Bellamy on the left last Sunday, it looks like we don't need Petrov. Rather, the problem is what we're giving our closest rivals. Martin Petrov, as an old fashioned outside left, is a rare commodity in the Premier League. He's also rather good - better, I think, than almost all of his fellow left wingers in the EPL: Albert Riera, Stewart Downing, Morten Gamst Pedersen, Matthew Etherington and so forth. Giving him to Tottenham, given how good a job he could do there, doesn't seem smart. Also giving Tottenham £10m to spend on David James, Niko Kranjčar, Sandro or whoever else they're going for makes even less sense. And all of this for one of their reserves?

BBC: TBH claims deal

Apparently Tal Ben Haim is claiming to have signed for Portsmouth:

"It's a big challenge," said the 27-year-old Israeli international. "I think we can turn things around."

Still no news from either club though. I imagine this will go through.