Hughes is Out; Mancini in; Fastest Hughes Post-Mortem on the Web

Manchester City today confirmed Mark Hughes has been sacked and Robert Mancini confirmed as new manager, assisted by Brian Kidd. Hughes’s staff also depart from the club. In a statement on the official web site, chairman Khaldoon Al-Mubarak cited a run of two wins from eleven matches, plus the judgment that this form was not likely to improve, as the reason why. You might want to follow the link provided directly to this statement, as other parts of the club website are unavailable at the moment.

In the meantime, read on to see an instant post-mortem on the Hughes regime…

Top Things Hughes Did Right.

1. Stayed with the club when he would have been within his rights to jump ship after it turned out Thaksin’s promises were hollow and the club were skint in summer 2008.

2. Bought very, very well. Hughes’s signings, from Wright-Phillips to De Jong to Adebayor to Bellamy to Tevez to even Santa Cruz have all done very well. There is one exception (so far) however that may have cost him his job.

3. Represented the club with class and tried to raise standards of expectations.

4. Got City into the League Cup semifinal, the first semifinal of a major competition since 1981.

5. Put an attacking team out there every game this season.

Things Hughes Did Wrong

1. Alienated too many players–Elano, Jo, reportedly Robinho, apparently others as well.

2. Failed to instill a tight defense. In this respect selling Dunne may in retrospect have been Hughes’s most disastrous decision, because it led directly to…

3. Failing to beat Fulham, Burnley, Hull at home, after leading in all three matches. In my opinion, these were the games that did Hughes in. Win those matches and City would be around 3rd in the table and flying high.

4. Didn’t cultivate much of a relationship with the fans.

But the kicker is this: in general Hughes didn’t do enough to convince anyone that he was really a world-class manager. And City are at the point now where they not only want but need a world-class manager. Not necessarily because their coaching abilities are any better, but because you need that universally respected figure at a big club with lots of expensive players with big egos. You can’t have a team where some of the players really like the coach (in this case, the likes of Bellamy, Ireland, Santa Cruz) and others do not.

That said, like Sven before him, in my judgment Hughes did leave the club in better shape than when he found it, assisted by a lot of investment of course. But the way he invested it means the next manager does not have much driftwood to clear out–fringe players still hanging about are left from the Sven era (Garrido, Benjani). City have a quality side, and Hughes deserves appreciation for shaping it. But it’s also a side that has performed not dramatically but substantially below expectations and capabilities. Legitimate doubts about Hughes’s ability to ever fully realize the potential that is in the team are the reason he’s been shown the door.

Thanks Sparky especially for sticking with the club during its midnight hour (August 2008). Welcome, Roberto Mancini–we’ll have more thoughts on his appointment in the days to come.

Category: Team News