Henry Winter on Twitter

[Mat01706]

If something had happened at Old Trafford that the journalists could get their teeth into, do you think any of them would have behaved like they did? Not a chance….

 

[feedthegoat]

When they were trying to ask Mancini do you know what kind of people you are working for? If I was Cook I would have had them turfed off the property and told they were no longer welcome at the ground. Imagine anyone trying to ask that question in a baconface press conference, he'd have exploded.

 

[Rochdale Blue]

Winters latest rant in the Telegraph, apologies if it has already been posted.


Despite the frantic efforts of Garry Cook, the club's harassed and hapless chief executive officer, to claim there had been "no conspiracy'' towards Mark Hughes, the scale of the plotting against the ousted manager became brutally apparent.
Sitting next to Cook at a press conference that bordered on Bedlam was Hughes's successor, Roberto Mancini. As calm as Cook was rattled, the elegant Italian confirmed that he had discussed the situation with Manchester City as long ago as Dec 2. So that was City's cover blown.
All the talk of doing the right thing, of behaving honourably towards Hughes, floated off down the Manchester Ship Canal, washed away by a wave of duplicity. If the Abu Dhabi royal family bought City to promote their nation to the world they are acting very strangely.
If the owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, and City's chairman, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, had simply stated at the start of their tenure that they were going to act with all the decorum of alley-cats, utilising the noted management methods of the Borgias, then their conduct towards Hughes would have been no surprise.
Clubs do line up successors in advance. It's their party and they can invite who they want to. But Mansour and Mubarak had indicated they were upright, principled employers. Hughes' experience shows otherwise.
"I met Khaldoon and the owner of the club, the sheikh, two weeks ago [before the Spurs game] in London,'' announced Mancini. "We met to discuss this situation, to speak on football. He [Khaldoon] wanted to know what I felt about Manchester City. In Italy this kind of thing is normal.''
Asked whether Italians would have been surprised if an out-of-work manager had lunched with AC Milan's owner, Silvio Berlusconi, and worried about Leonardo's future, Mancini simply replied: "No. No.'' Hailing from the land of Machiavelli, the former Inter coach sounded blithely unconcerned about the manner or timing of his replacing of Hughes. Que sera sera. Dog eat dog. That's life. For Mancini, managers are first-team coaches hired and fired at the whim of a wealthy owner.
As Cook fidgeted in his seat, Mancini was asked whether he had done any background research on Cook, Mubarak, Mansour and the football administrator Brian Marwood. "No, no, no. It is not important. I know Khaldoon from two weeks ago and he is a man of sport, a great person. The other men who work in the club are fantastic.''
Any worries about employers' modus operandi were clearly irrelevant when set against the offer of working in the Premier League on a £10 million,
3½-year contract. In another sign of his keenness to work for a meddling board, Mancini added that he would take boardroom advice on recruits. "In Italy it is not only the manager who signs players. It is also the director of football [effectively Marwood] and other officials.''
As the feeling of farce intensified, Mancini admitted he had talked to his old Lazio coach, Sven-Goran Eriksson, who hardly boasts an unblemished record as a judge of sheikhs. And to round off the sorry sensation that City have taken up residence in the Theatre of the Absurd, Mancini promised to improve his English by watching Coronation Street and EastEnders. He should also view the film Caligula to get a feel for the boardroom characters at Eastlands.
In truth, this was a tale of two Cities, the ludicrous land inhabited by Cook and the sang-froid kingdom of Mancini, unlike Cook a proper football man. Mancini was up for the challenge. "If you manage in Italy, living with pressure is the norm,'' he added. "So that won't be a problem for me here. I stayed at Inter for four years which was a record.''
Mancini, elegantly attired, was calmness personified as Cook stumbled through an opening address with all the dexterity of David Brent at the Christmas party. Cook pleaded with his audience to focus on Mancini, not on the departure of the popular Hughes. No chance.
An eight year-old could have picked holes in Cook's anti-conspiracy theory. Observing that the Premier League target for this season had been changed to "70 points'', Cook rather ignored that the table showed City were on course for that under Hughes. If they win their next two games, Stoke City and Wolves away, City will have 35 points from 19 games, halfway to Cook's target at the midway point of the season.
Perhaps fearing for his job, Cook was particularly keen to depict Mubarak as a model employer. "The chairman has been nothing but transparent with the manager [Hughes] throughout his tenure,'' stressed Cook. Not that transparent. Mubarak was talking to Mancini for the final three weeks of Hughes's reign.
In fairness to Mubarak, he wanted to tell Hughes to his face that he was being sacked, so he jumped on a plane from Abu Dhabi. "He was adamant not to do it by telephone call, fax, email, text,'' explained Cook. What sort of world does Cook inhabit where boards dismiss employees by text? What do they teach their executives at Nike, Cook's old home?
If Cook has been pilloried as the man who pulled the trigger, the gun was handed to him by Mubarak. To low whistles of pure cynicism, Cook then claimed that there was "no player rebellion'' despite Shay Given, Craig Bellamy and Roque Santa Cruz being loyal supporters of Hughes.
Fortunately for City, Mancini sought to extinguish the fires started by Cook. "It's normal for players to feel bad when their manager goes and I hope they will feel like that about me in many years' time when I go.''
When talk finally turned away from the club's betrayal of Hughes and touched on the football, Mancini promised an "attacking'' style as befitted someone who shared a prolific partnership with Gianluca Vialli at Sampdoria.
"When I played, I always wanted to attack,'' he said. "This is my philosophy.
These kind of [attacking] players – Robinho, Tévez – are fantastic. It is important for a big player like Robinho to make history with his club.''
He felt at home. "Manchester is the same as Milan. The weather is the same and you have two big clubs fighting against each other. Sir Alex Ferguson is a big manager who wins lots of trophies but we want to do better than Manchester United. My target is the top four. Next season, we want to win the title.'' Ambitious stuff.
Mancini has important decisions to make, notably on the captaincy. "I have a lot of important and inspirational players and, for now, my captain will [continue to] be Kolo Toure.'' He must also prepare for Stoke City on Boxing Day. Had he heard about Rory Delap's long throws? "I know about him. Shay Given will come for the throws.''
With that Mancini went on to the pitch for the photo-call. Above him, hanging from the terraces, fluttered a fans' banner, the words borrowed from an Oasis song and summing up City's existence. It read: "Some might say we will find a brighter day.'' Not yesterday.

 

[m27]

If something had happened at Old Trafford that the journalists could get their teeth into, do you think any of them would have behaved like they did? Not a chance….

We don't have to imagine a scenario.....when Mourinho took over from Ranieri, a perfect gentleman who achieved much more at Chelsea than Hughes ever did at City, the press fawned all over him during his first Press Conference. I'm sure Henry Winter was there too and he didn't ask Jose about relatively obscure Premiership footballers.

 

[borassic]

Winters latest rant in the Telegraph, apologies if it has already been posted.


Despite the frantic efforts of Garry Cook, the club's harassed and hapless chief executive officer, to claim there had been "no conspiracy'' towards Mark Hughes, the scale of the plotting against the ousted manager became brutally apparent.
Sitting next to Cook at a press conference that bordered on Bedlam was Hughes's successor, Roberto Mancini. As calm as Cook was rattled, the elegant Italian confirmed that he had discussed the situation with Manchester City as long ago as Dec 2. So that was City's cover blown.
All the talk of doing the right thing, of behaving honourably towards Hughes, floated off down the Manchester Ship Canal, washed away by a wave of duplicity. If the Abu Dhabi royal family bought City to promote their nation to the world they are acting very strangely.
If the owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, and City's chairman, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, had simply stated at the start of their tenure that they were going to act with all the decorum of alley-cats, utilising the noted management methods of the Borgias, then their conduct towards Hughes would have been no surprise.
Clubs do line up successors in advance. It's their party and they can invite who they want to. But Mansour and Mubarak had indicated they were upright, principled employers. Hughes' experience shows otherwise.
"I met Khaldoon and the owner of the club, the sheikh, two weeks ago [before the Spurs game] in London,'' announced Mancini. "We met to discuss this situation, to speak on football. He [Khaldoon] wanted to know what I felt about Manchester City. In Italy this kind of thing is normal.''
Asked whether Italians would have been surprised if an out-of-work manager had lunched with AC Milan's owner, Silvio Berlusconi, and worried about Leonardo's future, Mancini simply replied: "No. No.'' Hailing from the land of Machiavelli, the former Inter coach sounded blithely unconcerned about the manner or timing of his replacing of Hughes. Que sera sera. Dog eat dog. That's life. For Mancini, managers are first-team coaches hired and fired at the whim of a wealthy owner.
As Cook fidgeted in his seat, Mancini was asked whether he had done any background research on Cook, Mubarak, Mansour and the football administrator Brian Marwood. "No, no, no. It is not important. I know Khaldoon from two weeks ago and he is a man of sport, a great person. The other men who work in the club are fantastic.''
Any worries about employers' modus operandi were clearly irrelevant when set against the offer of working in the Premier League on a £10 million,
3½-year contract. In another sign of his keenness to work for a meddling board, Mancini added that he would take boardroom advice on recruits. "In Italy it is not only the manager who signs players. It is also the director of football [effectively Marwood] and other officials.''
As the feeling of farce intensified, Mancini admitted he had talked to his old Lazio coach, Sven-Goran Eriksson, who hardly boasts an unblemished record as a judge of sheikhs. And to round off the sorry sensation that City have taken up residence in the Theatre of the Absurd, Mancini promised to improve his English by watching Coronation Street and EastEnders. He should also view the film Caligula to get a feel for the boardroom characters at Eastlands.
In truth, this was a tale of two Cities, the ludicrous land inhabited by Cook and the sang-froid kingdom of Mancini, unlike Cook a proper football man. Mancini was up for the challenge. "If you manage in Italy, living with pressure is the norm,'' he added. "So that won't be a problem for me here. I stayed at Inter for four years which was a record.''
Mancini, elegantly attired, was calmness personified as Cook stumbled through an opening address with all the dexterity of David Brent at the Christmas party. Cook pleaded with his audience to focus on Mancini, not on the departure of the popular Hughes. No chance.
An eight year-old could have picked holes in Cook's anti-conspiracy theory. Observing that the Premier League target for this season had been changed to "70 points'', Cook rather ignored that the table showed City were on course for that under Hughes. If they win their next two games, Stoke City and Wolves away, City will have 35 points from 19 games, halfway to Cook's target at the midway point of the season.
Perhaps fearing for his job, Cook was particularly keen to depict Mubarak as a model employer. "The chairman has been nothing but transparent with the manager [Hughes] throughout his tenure,'' stressed Cook. Not that transparent. Mubarak was talking to Mancini for the final three weeks of Hughes's reign.
In fairness to Mubarak, he wanted to tell Hughes to his face that he was being sacked, so he jumped on a plane from Abu Dhabi. "He was adamant not to do it by telephone call, fax, email, text,'' explained Cook. What sort of world does Cook inhabit where boards dismiss employees by text? What do they teach their executives at Nike, Cook's old home?
If Cook has been pilloried as the man who pulled the trigger, the gun was handed to him by Mubarak. To low whistles of pure cynicism, Cook then claimed that there was "no player rebellion'' despite Shay Given, Craig Bellamy and Roque Santa Cruz being loyal supporters of Hughes.
Fortunately for City, Mancini sought to extinguish the fires started by Cook. "It's normal for players to feel bad when their manager goes and I hope they will feel like that about me in many years' time when I go.''
When talk finally turned away from the club's betrayal of Hughes and touched on the football, Mancini promised an "attacking'' style as befitted someone who shared a prolific partnership with Gianluca Vialli at Sampdoria.
"When I played, I always wanted to attack,'' he said. "This is my philosophy.
These kind of [attacking] players – Robinho, Tévez – are fantastic. It is important for a big player like Robinho to make history with his club.''
He felt at home. "Manchester is the same as Milan. The weather is the same and you have two big clubs fighting against each other. Sir Alex Ferguson is a big manager who wins lots of trophies but we want to do better than Manchester United. My target is the top four. Next season, we want to win the title.'' Ambitious stuff.
Mancini has important decisions to make, notably on the captaincy. "I have a lot of important and inspirational players and, for now, my captain will [continue to] be Kolo Toure.'' He must also prepare for Stoke City on Boxing Day. Had he heard about Rory Delap's long throws? "I know about him. Shay Given will come for the throws.''
With that Mancini went on to the pitch for the photo-call. Above him, hanging from the terraces, fluttered a fans' banner, the words borrowed from an Oasis song and summing up City's existence. It read: "Some might say we will find a brighter day.'' Not yesterday.

since when was this twat spokesman for City fans?

 

[ChesterRdBlue]

Is he fucking stupid, how can he slate city and use Spurs as a shining example of the way to do things, is his memory really that short. What a wanker.

 

[Sultana of Brunei]

If something had happened at Old Trafford that the journalists could get their teeth into, do you think any of them would have behaved like they did? Not a chance….

The question is whether HE would have behaved like that at Old Trafford. No, because he is a fawning, condescending, creeping little shit that sucks up to Ferguson whenever he get the opportunity. He is despicable.

 

[blueinsa]

When they were trying to ask Mancini do you know what kind of people you are working for? If I was Cook I would have had them turfed off the property and told they were no longer welcome at the ground. Imagine anyone trying to ask that question in a baconface press conference, he'd have exploded.

This all day long, when i heard that question, if i had been in the room, the twat would have got a kicking!

Disrespectful is not the word, fucking ignorant wankers!

 

[svennis pennis]

When they were trying to ask Mancini do you know what kind of people you are working for? If I was Cook I would have had them turfed off the property and told they were no longer welcome at the ground. Imagine anyone trying to ask that question in a baconface press conference, he'd have exploded.

This all day long, when i heard that question, if i had been in the room, the twat would have got a kicking!

Disrespectful is not the word, fucking ignorant wankers!

That made me livid. But the one for me was after his smarmy question about rory delaps throws. Roberto answered in good spirits about Shay but oh no, Winter thenade the obnoxious comment of. "so you don't believe in defenders making clearences then." I would of layed the smarmy little tosser out if I had been next to him. Who the fuck does this **** think he is taking advantage over a persons non fluent grasp
of English?

 

[m27]

This all day long, when i heard that question, if i had been in the room, the twat would have got a kicking!

Disrespectful is not the word, fucking ignorant wankers!

That made me livid. But the one for me was after his smarmy question about rory delaps throws. Roberto answered in good spirits about Shay but oh no, Winter thenade the obnoxious comment of. "so you don't believe in defenders making clearences then." I would of layed the smarmy little tosser out if I had been next to him. Who the fuck does this **** think he is taking advantage over a persons non fluent grasp
of English?

Did he really say that? I missed that. What a horrible horrible twat. It doesn't surprise me because he was trying to get a cheap laugh and failed, so obviously panicked and blurted another load of shite out. Tit.