MARK HUGHES is expected to leave Manchester City with a maximum €3.4 million pay-off under the contract granted by former owner Thaksin Shinawatra as he had not received an improved deal from the club’s oil-rich backers in Abu Dhabi.
Despite being entrusted with a €225 million overhaul of City’s playing staff, Hughes’s terms never improved on the three-year deal worth an estimated €40,000-45,000 a week he signed on joining from Blackburn Rovers in June 2008.
His arrival came two months before Sheikh Mansour purchased City from the controversial former Thai prime minister Thaksin and he leaves with 18 months remaining on that deal.
The former City manager, sacked and replaced by the former Internazionale coach Roberto Mancini with immediate effect on Saturday night, issued a staunch defence of his tenure yesterday in which he accused the club’s owners of shifting previously agreed targets for this season.
Mancini will be unveiled as City’s manager at Eastlands today, having agreed a three-and-a- half-year contract.
But many of Hughes’s signings for the club – such as Craig Bellamy, Gareth Barry and Shay Given – are dismayed by his sacking.
In a statement issued by the League Managers Association yesterday, Hughes denied knowing Saturday’s 4-3 win over Sunderland was to be his last game as City manager and claimed to have been betrayed.
It read: “I was informed after yesterday’s match against Sunderland that my contract with Manchester City was being terminated with immediate effect. Given the speed with which my successor’s appointment was announced, it would appear that the club had made its decision some considerable time ago.
“At the beginning of the season I sat down with the owners and it was agreed that a realistic target would be sixth place in the Premier League, or in the region of 70 points. All of this was communicated to the players and we all knew where we stood. We were absolutely on target at the time of my dismissal.”
City chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak said the decision to sack Hughes was in response to a run of just two wins in 11 league matches. However, Guus Hiddink’s agent has claimed there was contact from City’s chief executive, Garry Cook, earlier this season.
City’s Abu Dhabi owners say they lost confidence in Hughes and his coaching staff during the run of seven straight draws which comprised all the club’s Premier League matches in October and November. That, to Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, seemed an agonisingly long period to watch his expensively recruited team underperform.
To many football people, viewing those results in the context of a season, or City’s cocked-up modern history, it looks like a billionaire’s impatience to sack a manager, with a team having lost just two matches, sitting sixth in the Premier League.
City’s chairman was expressing glowing confidence in Hughes just three months ago.
“We believe in loyalty,” he said then, of sticking with Hughes throughout last season. “We don’t leave our men behind, we stick with them.. . . . Believe me, I really feel Mark is going to be a great manager.”
The crucial part of Khaldoon’s statement for the club began with: “Two wins in 11 Premier League games is clearly not in line with the targets that were agreed and set.”
The most significant line was this: “Sheikh Mansour and the board felt that there was no evidence that the situation would fundamentally change.”
That provided an answer from the owners in advance to the stories emanating from Eastlands that Brian Marwood, City’s head of football administration, and chief executive Garry Cook were behind Hughes’ ousting.
Mansour and Khaldoon made their minds up for themselves.
In Mancini, Khaldoon and Cook believe they have the man who might transform City into the Champions League club which Mansour and his money demand. He, and they, will today walk into scrutiny more intense than ever, after this December sacking of Hughes, a popular figure.
Guardian Service
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