mark hughes to work under fergie

[Skashion]

Hughes came to a club in very poor shape. That is perfectly true, and Mancini would have steered clear because he's better than Hughes and was managing Italian champions at the time, but Hughes never had to deal with those issues. A month later he hit the jackpot, got the world's best owners and therefore he never had to do the running the club on a shoestring which he is good at - hence his two best buys in Kompany and Zaba coming pre-Mansour. He wasted his opportunity. The end.

 

[Joga Bonito]

LOL YES please be true...

 

[Didsbury Dave]

It's a myth that has suited pretty much everyone at city to peddle, that when Hughes came the club were relegation bound. Sven spent a lot of money improving pearces team and we had some strong youngsters through the ranks. I felt when Hughes came , and made his first signings, we had a squad capable of top six . This was before the takeover.

Now i know thaksin was doing most of it on the tick, but thats a different argument. It was a solid squad.

As jma says above , Hughes started briefing the media about what a state the club were in when he lead that team to the relegation zone. It has suited fans to pursue that line since, and most senior people at the club, because it has excused some poor mamagent and bad buys by both managers since the takeover. It has papered over the mistakes made since.

Hughes did some things right but he never got a proper handle on our squad. In the end his inability to get them to defend properly did for him. Kolo toure and man to man marking lost him his job.

 

[pissedagain]

also the bullying of everton/blackburn in the transfer market got us a bad name, one which the owners didn t want, i wont mention hughe s pursuit of john terry

 

[u2fme2]

got told by a mate that sparky going to be fergie number 2 at utd
and the new players was his picks

fergie his going up stairs after this season and work with the board and sparky will get full control next season

don't belive a word of it

 

[mcfc1632]

can someone change the thread title to something like 'purplenose' or baconface' - all these references to fergie and saf on here are sickening

 

[Stretford Born Blue]

So who can confirm the speculation then eh?

 

[Citizen Green]

Squad Hughes had shortly before the Sheikh's takeover

1. Joe Hart
2. Micah Richards
3. Michael Ball
4. Nedum Onuoha
5. Vedran Corluka
6. Michael Johnson
7. Stephen Ireland
8. Shaun Wright-Phillips
9. Valeri Bojinov
11. Elano
12. Darrius Vassell
14. Jo
15. Javier Garrido
16. Kasper Schmeichel
17. Martin Petrov
18. Danny Mills
19. Gelson Fernandes
20. Felipe Caicedo
21. Dietmar Hamann
22. Richard Dunne
24. Ched Evans
26. Tal Ben-Haim
27. Benjani
28. Daniel Sturridge
29. Kelvin Etuhu
30. Shaleum Logan
33. Vincent Kompany

I think that's a squad which could of comfortably finished in the top 10 and pushed a top 6 finish, had Sven not been sacked I reckon we would of finished in the top 6 in 2008/09, as he would of continued to build a squad that was already talented.

 

[superwatsonwatson]

The squad Hughes inherited had finished the season with just 4 wins in the last 17. the last 3 were all defeats and the last of those was a scandalous 8-1 embarassment at 'Boro. It maybe fair to say the uncertainty of Svens future did not help but there was clearly problems in that squad. Hughes appointment was followed by speculation of near bankruptcy, hence the attempt to offload arguably 2 of our best players, Dunne and Ireland. Hughes refused to sell both and there was even a suggestion he may resign at this point. I certainly feel he held us together during the weeks leading up to the takeover.

 

[JohnMaddocksAxe]

So, are we to believe that the late season form of a team, under a totally different manager, a team that finished comfortably in the top half and contained some great players is a huge hindrance to the performance of the team under it's new manager for the whole of the next season?

Especially when that team has been subject to the new manager's much trumpeted 'football factory' throughout the pre season, when that top half team is then supplemented with Robinho, Kompany, Zab, SWP, etc and the manager is given unlimited funds to do absolutely whatever he wanted to the club's training ground, staff, facilities and infrastructure.

And the fact that he had to deal with a couple of weeks uncertainty in the summer, followed by such hugely favourable circumstances (that any other manager -perhaps excluding United, Chelsea and Arsenal at the time - in the league would cut off their right hand to be working under) is supposed to have been a huge problem?

I will stake my mortgage and everything I own that the managers of Villa, Newcastle, Sunderland, Wigan, West Ham, Everton, Fulham, etc didn't look at the circumstances that Hughes faced at City (bar a week or two in August) with anything other than envious eyes.

To suggest that a couple of difficult weeks meant a horrendous, handicapped job and an excuse for his shite performance is preposterous and the sort of weasel like excuse making that forms the basis of his personality.

I can't believe that people are so willing to line up to regurgitate this excuse for 18 months of shocking under performance.