fascinating article from the Guardian.............................................. (taken from the OS)
IN the aftermath of the Blues' defeat with honour in the UEFA Cup, respected Guardian writer David Conn offers a considered personal view of where the club stands ...
The Guardian
"Passionate City give Abu Dhabi owners glimpse of brighter future"
In a week when all the talk was of pressure on Mark Hughes, and Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Sheikh Mansour's emissary, flew in to watch his first match as Manchester City's chairman since January, the club's Abu Dhabi owners published yet another statement, insisting they are not about to replace Hughes with a more charismatic coach.
In the club's annual report – which itemised staggering levels of debt taken on by City during Thaksin Shinawatra's year in control – Mansour's representatives, who have backed Hughes to spend £135m on players, described him as "the brightest young manager in the Premier League".
Hughes, silver-haired, looking almost gaunt at times, cannot have been feeling at his youngest or brightest in the weeks since those supportive words went to the printers. Three defeats in 12 days were not the ideal run-up to Khaldoon's visit – which City maintained was a business trip long planned, not a nervous reaction from owners concerned for their investment.
It was not so much the 3-1 reverse at Hamburg's Nordbank Arena a week earlier which piled the doubts back on to Hughes but the limpness of defeat by the same score at home to Fulham on Saturday. Sections of the crowd finally lost patience with the manager, and his difficult relationships with Robinho and Elano, who sat on the bench through most of it.
Robinho, of course, is not only a delicate talent but the personification, too, of the new owners' boundless ambitions for City, born of their limitless cash. Hughes' travails spring to some extent from that; he was the manager the Sheikh inherited, and Khaldoon, and his strategic advisor, Simon Pearce, seem to be torn about what to do with him and with the club itself; between their commitment to loyalty and to long-term planning and the instinct to see their money bear instant results.
Hughes, one senses, may not be the manager they would have chosen but they recognise his solid virtues. They see the drawbacks of football's knee-jerk sacking traditions and want to demonstrate they are loyal people. Yet they watch City's wavering form, the restlessness of the star they bought, and wonder. The strong impression is that they would like Hughes to succeed, and publishing forthright statements about how much they value him makes it more difficult for men claiming honourable virtues to dispose of him.
Watching from the Colin Bell Stand, Khaldoon must surely have been encouraged here, not only by the thrilling effort of Hughes' players, led by Robinho and a marvellous Elano, but also by the support they received in a thunderous Eastlands. There was a lesson here for all Premier League clubs which struggle to fill their grounds; prices for this second leg had been generously reduced, starting at £5 for adults, £1 for children. Offer football fans such prices and they will come.
There was, too, a wider context to the football plot and the unrelenting speculation over Hughes' future; Hamburg SV arrived at this local authority-built home the very opposite of a rich man's club. Martin Jol – who cut a ruddy, upright figure next to Hughes in the technical areas – is employed by a club in the proud German tradition of supporter-ownership.
Hamburg is wholly owned by its 60,000 member-supporters, who elect one of the four directors and a whole board of 12 to supervise them. With this collective backing, Hamburg have built steadily back towards their pre-eminence of the 1980s.
The team played with common purpose here, although they rocked for 20 minutes of the second half in the heat of City's efforts, and ultimately went through only with the help of the bar, post and heroics from the goalkeeper, Frank Rost. Their fans, 5,000 of whom stayed dancing and singing for 20 celebratory minutes after the final whistle, have always fiercely defended their model of ownership, resisting proudly the idea that a rich man could buy their club, even a man with pockets as deep as a sheikh.
English football has gone the other way, with absentee landlords buying clubs as investments and to reflect prestige upon themselves. That has ladled pressure on the young generation of managers, who bear those ambitions on lonely shoulders.
Hughes said, without expanding, that his meeting with Khaldoon had gone well; he is understood to have had a three-hour session with the chairman at which long- term plans were discussed. His team played manfully and skilfully for him here Brazilians included, and City's fans showed how deeply they feel they belong to the club the Sheikh bought. Khaldoon will have been impressed and, although City went out, they did so in a certain blaze of triumph. They banished the question mark dangling over Mark Hughes' head, for now.
