Is Sven-Goran Eriksson now trying to get fired?

The talk out of Eastlands for a good two months now (at least) has been that Sven-Goran Eriksson, after just one season in charge of Manchester City, was on the way out because of dissatisfaction from Thaksin Shinawatra - or "George Thai-nbrenner," as I have taken to nicknaming him - over the club's results in the second half of the season. However, in spite of an 8-1 drubbing at Middlesbrough on the final match day and a subsequent pair of 3-1 losses to Asian all-star teams, the sword of Damocles is still hanging by its hair above Eriksson's head. No doubt a bid to the UEFA Cup, however completely unexpected and only barely earned on actual competitive merit, has given Shinawatra some pause, and Eriksson's comments to the press have largely avoided speculation, as he talks mostly about the future of the club but in such a way that it can't really be determined from his chosen words whether he's including himself in that future. Not bad considering English isn't even close to his first language.

Here's the question, though: if you were Sven-Goran Eriksson, would you want to get fired?

The initial talk was that Eriksson would be pressured to resign. But why should he resign? He did the job he was asked to do - getting the club into the top ten in his first season - and obviously he's not going to walk away from that kind of money. If Shinawatra wants him out that badly, he's going to have to eat Sven's contract for the last two years. And in the end, it could indeed be this that stays his hand; could he really want Sven gone so badly that he would just write off millions of pounds?

But then, if you're Sven, do you want to go through two more years of this? If doing exactly what the owner asked for in his first season got Eriksson buried by rumors that he hadn't done enough and was about to be sacked, what's going to happen next year if he doesn't get City into the top six? (And with a UEFA Cup bid already in the offing this season, who's to say Thaksin's eyes don't widen to dinner plates again if City start 2008-09 in the top four just as they did 2007-08?) What about in 2009-10, when Eriksson is being asked - no pressure! - to guide City into the top four, a position only occasionally reached by clubs other than Man U, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal in the history of the Premiership?

The problem, as I see it, is that in stepping in with a lot of money, Shinawatra has determined that he should be getting for his cash whatever he wants to get for it. The time frame for moving into the top four is almost embarrassingly ambitious, and in threatening to sack Eriksson so quickly, Thaksin has displayed an extremely short-sighted approach to his ownership. In various interviews with the official club podcast, Thaksin had stated on multiple occasions that the top ten was the plan for 2007-08, and appeared to acknowledge that the club's late-season struggles were due in part to injuries and a general lack of depth which, he suggested, would be remedied over the summer. Now it just seems like he was lying through his teeth. The depth issue may still be remedied, but the very act of acknowledging it tells you that Eriksson does not seem to blame for the post-New Year's dip in form. More than likely, Shinawatra just got greedy, eyeing that early-season splash and assuming that things could stay that way all season without fail.

City have dropped two 3-1 defeats to Asian all-star sides you'd think a Premier League club could have defeated, but you have to consider the sides City put out - in the second game, agains the South China Invitational XI, Eriksson started just four players who had featured regularly all year in Darius Vassell, Martin Petrov, Geovanni, and Javier Garrido. Meanwhile, five players from the City youth squad saw significant time, and the second-half struggles were in front of a fourth-string goaltender whose name I'd never even read before. This is the time at which you have to wonder whether Eriksson was using meaningless friendlies to see what he could get out of reserves and Academy players, or whether he was conspicuously starting subpar sides while right under Shinawatra's nose in the hope of forcing the chairman to swing the axe. The rumors have been swirling that Sven has already signed a provisional deal with Benfica to become their manager as soon as he is fired by City; other rumors had the Mexican national team extending him an offer to be their coach. The mere fact that one of the biggest and most successful European clubs has been so desperate to bring Eriksson in (and a fairly prominent international team as well) should suggest to Thaksin that just maybe he really does have a good manager on his hands after all. But after having done all he can to alienate Eriksson, it may just be that Shinawatra will have to give him the boot, lest the Swede maintain the recent form where both he and the players have started to seem like they'd rather be anywhere but Manchester City.