Having worked in senior finance roles for a few years and looked in some details at what it takes to bring long term success to organisations I do think that impatient fans in the same way as impatient shareholders are the most likely thing to stop us achieveing what we need to.
The fact is to get to where we want to get to (with the exception of the academy) we need to upgrade every bit of our club and we need to upgrade everything from the players , to the culture, to the ground, to the facilities, to the way we conduct business.
The only way to do this is with patience, bottle, consistency and time. That does not mean we stick with the manager and the players we have necessarily, but it does mean we make no impatient, foolish and knee jerk decisions. If and when we make a change in manager we should do so in a calculated and professional way. when the right person is available and when the rubbish has been cleaned up by the current manager and not just because we lose a few games or we are feeling stroppy.
There is also no point getting the right manager in unless we have the system in place to support them and have things ready to go. Therefore I think we would probably be sensible to make a decision in March or so if we change to have someone lined up by mid april to start on June 1. To change now would be stupid.
We also need to realise that even if we had the best manager in the world today many of these problems would stil be happening. Nothing good in business, life or sport comes about overnight, nothing gets better without first getting worse. Cultures are not changed without pain, resistance, resentment and other problems. But above all no business ever delivers a successful strategy if everytime there are problems short term decisions are allowed to over rule long term strategy and if the management of an organisation bottle it and pander to short termism with every problem.
To change the culture of our club will take a few seasons and a major change in personnel on and off the pitch and judging by BlueMoon in the stands as well. It will require a dedication to a mission which will push forward regardless of the support and it will require those who want to stay on board to change mentality too.
To change the culture off the pitch will mean binning favourites if they cannot live a professional life and they cannot show the work ethic and professionalism that is required. The argument that our players are too good to have to live by Hughes ethic is wrong. B*llox if any player is not prepared to try every game, not prepared to train hard enough and live cleanly they should be booted out - exactly as any good manager would do. This will take a few seasons and this will take this time whoever is in charge as to replace your best players means you have to have signed the right replacements you cannot just strop and start playing 16 year olds.
Even when we make these changes we are going to have a team of strangers who I think it will take a year or two to bond, train, get playing the system etc.
In summary if webehave professionally, ruthlessly and stay focussed I think we have a chance of top 10 this year , top 6 next, top 4 the year after and then maybe of winning something. If we keep chopping and changing, acting all emotionally and pandering to the fans then we will be a joke forever.
For years this is what City have done, managers have been pushed out for short term expediency, players have been chopped for short term expediency and the impatience of the
fans and the believe we are still the huge team we were in the 60's has been allowed to ruin every start we have given ourselves. Because the fans have not yet accepted (it is exactly the same at Spurs and Newcastle) that we are mid table and medium we constantly change, throw money at the problem and bottle it when we don't achieve top 4 status.
now for the first time ever we have a regime who can afford to and due to where they are can very easily ignore the fans and the hysterical press and this may be the greatest thing in our favour.
As for yesterday we know now which players are not professional enough to be part of our future, this makes our clubs decisions that much more easy. We probably also know by now Hughes limitations and what we need to do about this and when we need to do it.
