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?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.
Monday 21 December 2009
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:
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6 comments:
Time for your tablets Lonesome. Move on, City have done the right thing and done it impeccably. Stop listening to your sneering, jealous friends in the press.
indeed it's boring,,,
Was I surprised by this decision? Yes most defin ... err well no actually, thinking about it I probably wasn’t.
And this in essence will always sum up the Hughes era. For every positive (and there were several of note) there was a negative or at least a nagging doubt that things would be seen through to a 100% positive conclusion; and that always made me doubt he was the man for the job.
Examples?
• “Re-invigorating the academy” ... why have no academy players come through and shone in the last 18 months from what was arguably the best bunch to date?
• “Ireland is superman. Bellamy a revelation” .... no doubt, but in the same period we’ve seen the worst of Dunne, Richards, Elano, Petrov, Robinho, Bridge, and are starting to see the same from Adebeyor, Lescott, and Toure.
• “The Chelsea and Arsenal performances were outstanding” ... and for every one of those there was a Spurs and a Hull.
• “The coaching setup has been rebuilt from the ground up” ... have you seen our defence ... who forgot that particular role!?!?!?
In short I always believed that Hughes was Mr 90% and that the steep learning curve would perhaps catch up with him.
That said I am also utterly convinced that Mancini also fits perfectly into the same mould ... a gamble. Will he be given enough time to grow into the challenge ... history would say not, but being a City fan I am hopeful he will.
perhaps jpb you should swap with danny as you seem to be the more bitter of the two!
@Johnny Crossan and Thomas
Right decision, wrong time, wrongly handled.
The reason Hughes has all the sudden gathered so much sympathy in the media is because of the unprofessional manner in which Hughes was sacked, unless you consider letting a man find out he was sacked by letting media rumors fester and accumulate impeccable.
I've yet to see one person from the executive board step up and take reposibility for sacking Hughes other than the pathetic smoke and mirrors PR release read by Cook at Mancini's press introduction.
The bottomline is that Cook, Marwood and the board have alot to answer for here and they've been evasive to say the least. Its quite clear they had lost faith in Hughes and I suppose that's fair given the money they invested in him but they clearly dragged their feet in doing it, hardly professional in my book. These men conducted themselves so poorly that they made Mike Ashley look like a sound business man. Not something to be proud of is it?
What bothers me and I would think bothers you is that I doubt that the type of players and coaches we would all like to see at City are none too impressed with how the club is being run at the moment.
Again I'll concede to you that sacking Hughes was perhaps the right decision but for you to say it was done professionally and impeccably is beyond credibilty. You seriously have to be taking the piss!
There's a lot of foaming at the mouth going on about the manner of Hughes' dismissal. This article makes it clear that the decision was made in Abu Dhabi, and Khaldoon wanted to be the one to tell him.
It all unravelled, because too many people already knew and couldn't keep their mouths shut. Cook (and Marwood) unsuccessfully tried to keep a lid on it. But don't blame them for trying to be loyal to their boss.
There's also concern that Mancini was hired "behind Hughes' back". Of course he was; The most sensible way to replace a manager in any field is "fire on Friday, hire on Monday"; but you can't hire on Monday if you haven't done your homework.
If/when Mancini needs to be replaced (hopefully after 10 years and multiple trophies won), I'm sure his potential replacements will understand exactly what City did, and why.
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