Marked for Death

Blame Roman Abramovich. He took over Chelsea in June 2003, and at the end of the 2003-2004 campaign the club found itself in second place in the Premiership. The following year, they won the league. Manchester City's new owners likely had their sights set on this level of improvement when they took over in the summer of 2008 and rather shockingly added Robinho, but the club finished a distant 10th, worse even than the previous season under Sven-Goran Eriksson. This year, following an enormous spending spree on players like Gareth Barry, Carlos Tevez, Kolo Toure and Emmanuel Adebayor, the club sits in 6th, but a string of draws that kept City anchored just outside of the Champions League places likely sealed Mark Hughes' fate.

Of course, everyone seems to forget that in 2002-2003, Chelsea finished fourth. It's not like Abramovich led Fulham to a title in two seasons. For all the lip service that the owners believed in Mark Hughes and believed in City as a project, in the end they were scarcely more patient than Thaksin Shinawatra, who stated before the 2007-08 season that a top-ten finish would please him and then sacked Eriksson for finishing ninth and making Europe (if only via the Fair Play League). Hughes ended up with less than a season and a half, in spite of having City just a few points shy of the top four with a game in hand and into the semifinals of the Carling Cup.

Hughes was also quite popular with many of the players, particularly the British and Irish ones, with Shay Given and Hughes' countryman Craig Bellamy evidently leading a dressing-room revolt when they got the news. At the same time, he may not have been nearly as popular with other players - not least Robinho - and it's entirely possible that the owners felt Hughes simply did not have the stature to attract the major international stars they were hoping to bring to City. Various players linked with moves had laughed them off, some saying that City did not seem a serious club at the moment. Hiring Mancini, a major international manager with massive domestic success in Serie A, was probably seen as a step in that direction; reports of attempts to lure Guus Hiddink or Jose Mourinho fall under the same category.

And they might be right about this. There is little doubt that Hughes is a capable Premiership manager, but City do not wish to be Blackburn. The only British manager who seems to draw major international stars is Alex Ferguson, and even he couldn't hang onto Cristiano Ronaldo. On the other hand, maybe it's just the weather in England; most players, given a choice, seem to prefer Spain or Italy, in spite of the millions on offer in the Premiership.

Ultimately, whether or not this was a good idea will depend on Roberto Mancini (and, to perhaps not much less an extent, on Brian Kidd). If he leads Man City to a Carling Cup title and the top four, it will be a success - maybe Mark Hughes could still have done those things, but their achievement would make most Man City fans forgiving of his ouster. If City fall to United at the next Carling hurdle and end up in the Europa League or, even worse, out of Europe once more, it will have been an unmitigated disaster. Mancini or no, what is really needed to achieve these things is a serious shoring up of the defense, especially with Joleon Lescott now on the sidelines and Kolo Toure reportedly angling to find a way back to Spain. Drumming Richard Dunne out of the club in August is looking dumber by the day.

The best-case scenario is that Mancini can guide City into the top four, and the combination of Champions League football and an international manager will prove sufficiently enticing to the top talent City's owners want to bring into the side. The worst case is that Mancini proves no more successful and City become just another revolving-door for managers and players, with the fans never knowing who's coming and going from one month to the next.

I feel bad for Mark Hughes. Much like with Eriksson, and really with Stuart Pearce before him, I don't think he was fired for reasons that were all down to him. The defense needed strengthening; how much were their struggles really down to Hughes? How much difference will Mancini make without a big January buying spree that could have happened under Hughes anyway? Ultimately, Mancini needs to prove that he can lure international stars. If he's no more successful at that, it's unlikely that this move will make any difference, aside from fracturing the dressing room. And that would really just be a shame.