| « Time for some away success at Goodison | City Ratings for West Brom game » |
The whole Hughes thing
Some say devil, some say Angel, whichever side of the divide you are on, Mark Hughes sticks to his guns, speaks his mind and remains clear on the subject of Manchester City; it is a work in progress that won't catch up to the top teams overnight. The building blocks he is putting in place, he says, will yield results in the next season or two and he is going nowhere.
City has become an easy target for lazy journalists who would sensationalise everything, latch on to the smallest hint of dissent and try to blow it up to crisis point, every bad result a disaster, every mistake on or off the field criticised and blamed on the manager. Too much money, too little experience, on a scale of one-to-ten, popularity wise, Hughes is a minus figure. A mixture of Rasputin, Bin Laden, and Stan Laurel.
He seems unfazed by the UEFA Cup exit, and immediately re-focusses on the league. Harry Redknapp talks about the seventh spot saying Tottenham will be having a go, but man City will be there or thereabouts too, come the end of the season. That's the target, although it depends on other results going our way, Hughes remains determined to get european football next season.
mancityblues member Madame Cholet puts the whole thing into perspective;
"I still flip-flop in the Hughes debate but on the whole I find it difficult to resist the arguments put forward by those who know better than me and whose opinion is that Hughes should go.
Having said that, I was thinking this morning how pleased I am that the ADG have not displayed a knee-jerk reaction and have clearly rejected the views of the British press who would like to see Hughes hung from the yard arm. I don't want people in charge of the club who are led by the nose into making decisions they feel shouldn't be made. I want someone strong and level headed in charge of the club. Whether or not their 'wait and see' policy pays off, I'll always be glad they didn't do something they felt was wrong.
I said some months ago that I thought we would finish in 8th place, I stand by that and I think if Hughes is able to achieve that I should be content"
I agree Madame, entirely.
Trackback address for this post
Trackback URL (right click and copy shortcut/link location)
11 comments
I was one of the minority chanting at Mark "you dont know what your doing" when in hindsight he obviously did, Elano was knackered and Gelson was the only like for like substitition, i didnt get the whole story on the day just jumped on the detractors band wagon, for this i am sorry and ashamed and i vow to not jump on this band wagon again without prior knowledge of the whole story!
Mark Hughes is a Legend and Man City are lucky to have him as our manager at this stage of the game!
Any detractors object to this then you can kiss my a*se
Gazinio - Manchester SS G514
mum, how many times have i told you, dont contradict people who know what their talking about!
That's a bit rich, isn't it?
No, we're a bit rich - and journos are lazy
In the important one, with just over ten minutes to go, when we desperately needed a goal to take us into extra time, Hughes took a defensive midfielder off. At last - thank God, he's finally come to his senses. No sorry, he's acting totally true to form - he brought on the headless chicken to help us thrust for goal.
With 6 minutes to go he took off Elano, our best player on the night and our best chance for another goal, and replaced him with Sturridge.
Nothing out of the ordinary then - just about what we've come to expect really. What was a surprise though was playing Ireland so deep that he was out of the game as far as supporting the attack was concerned. An interesting development, and one that we can expect to see much more of in the months and years to come.
Where do we stand in the Fair Play League?
Where in the manual of successful European football competition tactics does it say that a team 3 - 1 down from the first leg, 2 - 1 up in the second leg, with ten minutes left to go, has to play with two defensive midfielders? (I know Kompany had pulled back, but where does it say that you have to have four across the back either?)
It's me isn't it? I'm the only City fan in the world who thinks that in those circumstances you should drop everything and go for it. What's this? Flecks! Flecks at the side of my mouth. Flecks of - foam?
So we had to have someone there with fresh legs to defend the back 3 and win the ball back. You can't win without it, you know!
Comment feed for this post