mammutly said:
It amazes me that some people still blame Sven for the 8-1 at boro. The real surprise is that he held the team together until then with all the shit that was going on behind the scenes.
Not wanting to revive what is thankfully now an old debate, but anyone who has any real idea of what was happening at City in those days knows that the manager, the board and the players were working under ridiculous conditions.
Talking about this with Bernard Halford the other night. He didn't tell me this but I know that there was a meeting late on in the season involving Thaksin and his aide, Sven, Mackintosh and a couple of others.
Thaksin started off saying to Sven "Why did we finish below Aston Villa. We should be above them." Sven replied quite calmly that they'd spent more but, more importantly, O'Neill had a season longer to work with them and this was important.
Thaksin didn't accept this and shouted that for all the money we'd spent (i.e. borrowed) that we should be finishing above teams like Villa. Mackintosh then talked about their spending compared to ours but Thaksin didn't want to hear that and went off on one, picking up and throwing a vase in the general direction of Sven. This was our owner.
Bernard was fairly diplomatic about the 29 managers he'd worked with but it was clear Sven was one of his favourites and he made a big impression on everyone at the club. Wish he'd stayed with us (no disrespect intended to Hughes or Mancini).
