Backlash to Hughes Sacking Mounts

If you had asked me a week ago whether I thought it made sense to sack Mark Hughes, I would have laughed. Yet nearly a year ago probably a majority of City supporters would have been happy to see Hughes depart after the FA Cup defeat to Nottingham Forest, at a time when City were barely out of the relegation zone. And while this season has not been “bad” by any stretch of the imagination, the defensive fragilities have been there for all to see. What is shocking is not so much that the axe fell, but the manner and timing of the departure. Worse, news stories make it abundantly clear that City have been shopping Hughes’s job around for some time, blatantly unethical behavior that is misleading to the players, fans, and the public.

So really there are three questions to ask about Hughes’s departure: Was it fair, was it in fact a shrewd move for the club that maximizes the likelihood of Champions League qualification, and was the departure handled well? Those are three distinct questions that need to be separated out.

On the fairness issue, you can look at it two ways. One way is that City are 6th in the table, still within reach of a Champions League place if a good run can be put together, in the semifinals of the League Cup, all this without really fully clicking on all cylinders. The other way to look at it is that Hughes has been living on borrowed time for a while: That 2008/09 was an underachievement, and that despite the decent league position, the weak goal differential (+6) compared to other Champions League contenders suggest that there is still a large gap between City and the elite.

Most people in football and impartial observers would make the argument Hughes deserved more time. Many City supporters who have seen every match the last two years felt they had seen enough, and too many “typical City” moments on the pitch, particularly in the form of conceding late goals. Personally, I find myself torn on the question. I wouldn’t call myself a Hughes fan but I respect the job he did and how he carried himself, and would have been quite happy for him to have until the rest of the season, but not entirely confident about the likely result.

The next question is whether this will actually help City this season. Because if not, then the sacking really is pointless by any standard. Here the answer is obviously unknown, but Mancini will have bigger issues to deal with than just sorting out the set piece defending. Reports have it that six City players led a protest against the news, which speaks well of their loyalty and character. But once could look at it the other way and say, well it was only six out of the squad. In any case, it is a divided squad and there are going to be some upset players. It might be hard for some to buy into promises about what City is going to do and become.

So Mancini has to sell them not only on himself but on his vision for the club, and he has to build relationships with the players from scratch. I worry about younger players like Micah Richards who have seen managers come and go with no lasting stability. Maybe Mancini will be fantastic for such players. Maybe he won’t–we will see.

Added to this is the insecurity all the players will feel, as they try to earn a spot in the new team. Does the new boss rate me or not? How will tactics and formations change? Surely he’s going to want to bring in new players–so he will be going the out door?

There is a legitimate question about whether a team can perform well with those kinds of questions hanging in the air. Some may thrive under the pressure or find Mancini a breath of fresh air, some may flounder, for others it may not matter. But to expect a wholesale move–this is not just replacing Kevin Keegan with understudy Stuart Pearce, but a complete staff revolution–to have an immediate payoff in results is a genuine roll of the dice.

Then there’s the last question: how City handled the decision. Kevin Keegan described the statement from City announcing the move as a statement of a “business” not a “football club,” adding that in football you have to allow for contingencies such as injuries and unexpected events. Joe Royle also slammed the decision, along with a host of other pundits. And then there is the criticism of Hughes himself, who says the club was on target to meet expectations.

Hughes apparently would like to pin blame on front office brass Garry Cook and Brian Marwood for how this went down, but there’s seems little doubt that the decision rested principally with the ownership. That said, I do not trust Cook to handle anything sensitive with class or decorum. The evidence is that Hughes is correct in saying he was “betrayed” by having Cook go behind his back to line up a new manager while he was still employed. Worse, the leaking of the news meant that Saturday had the air of a public execution of someone who didn’t deserve it.

The result was that a decision that plausibly could have been justified in football terms was carried out in such a way as to earn the indignation of most of the footballing world. Saturday was not a good day for the club’s reputation, and I know some supporters who to this point have been very enthusiastic about the new ownership’s style and intentions are having genuine second thoughts. Other fans simply see the move as part of the prerogatives of ownership and consider Hughes lucky to have been given as much time and support as he did.

I hope that Mancini works out. I also hope that before long the owners reach the same conclusion about Cook as they did about Hughes. From dissing Richard Dunne to the Kaka affair to the Dunne transfer to the Hughes sacking to various statements claiming that Premiership should be restructured to his embarrassing defense of Thaksin, just about every time Cook has come into the limelight it’s put the club in a negative light.

In the meantime, while Khaldoon al-Mubarak may sincerely believe this move has taken City one step forward in footballing terms, he needs to recognize that the move has, at least in the short term, knocked City’s reputation down a couple of notches.

Category: Team News