Post by Macmoish on May 8, 2012 6:56:47 GMT
GUARDIAN - LOUISE TAYLOR
QPR's Mark Hughes heads back to Manchester City with double agenda
Manager has been aware of the 'ominous' fixture since he got to Loftus Road in January and is ready to settle a score
It is the morning of 19 December 2009. When Mark Hughes switches his phone on he fields a series of calls from friends and reporters telling him he is about to be sacked by Manchester City.
At his local newsagents this prediction is already emblazoned in headline form across the backpage of a tabloid but, when Hughes seeks clarification from City, none seems forthcoming. Ominously the previously supportive press officer is said to be "away on a trip" and, by now, the radio airwaves are crackling with speculation that Roberto Mancini is the club's new manager in waiting.
It is a Saturday and in a matter of hours City are kicking off at home against Sunderland. Hughes and his staff debate what to do. With the silence from the boardroom still deafening they prepare the players as normal, take their seats in the dugout and oversee a 4-3 win over Steve Bruce's side. Within minutes of the final whistle Hughes is told to clear his desk while Mancini prepares to be publicly anointed as his successor.
During the past few years City have done a lot of things extremely well, notably some life‑changing charity work locally and worldwide, but they handled Hughes's departure appallingly.
The fear now at the Etihad Stadium is that this crass behaviour could come back and bite them. On Sunday Mancini's team need to beat Hughes's Queens Park Rangers at Eastlands to be sure of winning the title. Should City stumble, the notion that it might be karma in action will prove impossible to resist.
"There's a big irony in that it's him we're up against," says Joleon Lescott, one of several City first‑teamers who were either signed by the legendary Manchester United striker or worked under him. "Mark Hughes was a great boss and he was very good to me."
If the knowledge that Hughes inspired extraordinary loyalty from many City players, Carlos Tevez foremost among them, will be irrelevant on Sunday, the reality that QPR require a point to be certain of avoiding relegation is making everyone at the Etihad distinctly queasy.
By way of added spice not only does Hughes's backroom team contain former City employees including Mark Bowen, Eddie Niedzwiecki and Kevin Hitchcock but the team features three Eastlands old boys, Nedum Onuoha, Shaun Wright‑Phillips and Joey Barton.
It has not been forgotten that the former City chief executive Garry Cook resigned in the wake of claims that he had emailed Onuoha's Cancer‑suffering mother, mocking her illness. Or that an investigation by City pronounced there was "foundation" to the accusations.
While Onuoha left for QPR in January Barton departed in the summer of 2007 – a year before Hughes succeeded Sven-Goran Eriksson – in the wake of a training‑ground assault on a team‑mate, Ousmane Dabo, to which he later pleaded guilty in court, thereby incurring a suspended prison sentence plus community service.
Potential sub-plots abound but the principal human-interest storyline promises to be in and around the adjacent technical areas.
Understandably Mancini took a dim view of ill-judged – if not entirely inaccurate – comments from Hughes last autumn in which he described the Italian as "autocratic" and blamed him for Tevez's three‑month disappearance to Argentina.
"Maybe it's a little bit fated that I'm going back to City on the final day," says Hughes. "If we were to get something, it would be a fantastic story. They're going for the title, we're trying to stay in the league. That fixture loomed quite ominously in the distant future when I first took over here [in January]. But maybe now the stars have aligned and things have fallen on our side of the line."
Mancini, whose side have not lost at home all season, will be mindful that Hughes and his staff possess rare, possibly invaluable, knowledge of various City players' little-known technical flaws, tactical weaknesses, preferred tricks and on-pitch foibles. He is also conscious that his Welsh counterpart continues to feel deeply wronged by his dismissal after only 18 months in charge and at a time when City were sixth in the Premier League and had lost only twice since the start of the 2009‑10 season.
"I had all the pain and now other people are getting the gain," Hughes has complained repeatedly. The 48-year-old's mood is hardly enhanced by his managerial career, which had begun promisingly with Wales and then Blackburn Rovers, suddenly striking a few walls. There was a decent season at Fulham followed by a resignation designed to "further my ambitions" but which instead merely saw him ignored by Aston Villa and lose out to Martin O'Neill for the Sunderland job.
Eventually he accepted QPR's offer but the feeling persists, at least for anyone who monitored the laudable transformation he implemented at Blackburn, that Hughes belongs at a bigger club.
The worry is that a man who commands immense affection from not only former players – Craig Bellamy, Shay Given, Tevez and Robbie Savage are just a few of those who will not hear a word said against him – but, equally significantly, a cross-section of junior employees at his former clubs was spoilt by the six‑star luxury he swiftly grew accustomed to with City. Reports of Hughes's demands for bigger and better desks, chairs and computers in an ultimately expanded office at Fulham certainly did not reflect well on a man who did himself few favours with that "autocrat" jibe about Mancini.
At least Sir Alex Ferguson probably enjoyed it. There were a few years when Hughes and his old United manager experienced frosty relations but since the latter's City exit the ice has broken, with Ferguson remembering precisely why he once described the younger, then surprisingly shy, young Welshman as a "warrior you'd trust with your life".
Now he has no option but to pin his title hopes on one of Old Trafford's great centre‑forwards and to pray that QPR's players can somehow replicate their manager's old brand of brilliance and brutality. "I just wish Sparky was still playing," says Ferguson. "But Mark was sacked in a very unethical way and he'll remember that."
Former manager's Eastlands legacy
Joelon Lescott Became one of the world's most expensive defenders when Mark Hughes' City paid Everton £22m in August 2009
Carlos Tevez Joined City in July 2009. Got on well with Hughes, who defended him when he fell out with Roberto Mancini in September
Gareth Barry Another who arrived in the summer of 2009 after Hughes fought off Liverpool's approach for the England midfielder
Nigel de Jong City paid Hamburg £18m for the combative Holland midfielder and he quickly became a regular starter in Hughes' team
Pablo Zabaleta One of Hughes' first signings, unheralded at £6.45m from Espanyol. Has become a key squad member
Vincent Kompany Had a slow start to his City career after Hughes signed him in August 2008 but has since become the hugely influential captain
www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/may/07/mark-hughes-qpr-machester-city
GUARDIAN
Joleon Lescott: If City can close the title out it would be unreal
• 'We've been nervous at times but we deserve to be there'
• 'I came to this club to make history,' says Yaya Touré
Manchester City may be only 90 minutes from wrapping up the Premier League but Joleon Lescott has urged the club's fans to "not get carried away" in the run‑up to the title decider this weekend.
City face a Queens Park Rangers side led by their former manager Mark Hughes on Sunday. Their superior goal difference dictates that, whatever Manchester United do at Sunderland, a win will make Robert Mancini's team champions.
"I'd say to our fans, keep a lid on it this week and let's not get carried away. If it happens on Sunday, they can celebrate then," said the City centre‑half. "It's in our hands but there's another vital game to go." Lescott knows that a stumble would render City's hard‑fought win at Newcastle United last Sunday irrelevant.
"It's a massive game at the weekend. It's not all over yet but, if we could close the title out, it would be unreal. You dream of these things. I never once thought: 'Yeah, I'm bound to win the Premier League.' But it was always in my mind. It will be crazy days if we win it. We've been nervous at times this season but we deserve to be up there.
"When I first arrived here [from Everton in 2009] it was more hope that we could win the league rather than real belief. But we've developed and got more players and are all starting to really believe. It's developed over a period of time. It's been a growing feeling."
Now Hughes, the man who signed Lescott for City, and a QPR team battling relegation, stand in the way of Mancini's ambitions. "There's a bit of irony in that it's him we're up against," said Lescott. "Mark Hughes was a great boss and he was very good to me."
When City lost 1-0 at Arsenal in early April the title looked Old Trafford bound but five successive victories, including a home win against Manchester United, have altered the Premier League landscape.
"It would have been crazy to have given it up after Arsenal," said Lescott. "That would have been silly. There was no chance of that happening. It would have been criminal. I don't think there was any way that could happen here because of the attitudes of the players. At this level of our careers we are not going to just give up when we get close to something like this. The lads I play with have a never-say-die attitude."
Yaya Touré, who scored the decisive goals at Newcastle to put the title within City's reach, said: "Always I have said this club can go far, this club can win something. Last year we won the FA Cup and we have to continue like that and next week try to win the game against QPR.
"We know it's going to be tough but I believe in this team, I believe in the players we have. We have some fantastic players. I have always said I came to this club to make history even if some people said I came for different things. I am going to keep telling them I came to this club to make history and that is my first objective, to help make the club into a successful football club." Jonas Gutierrez, Newcastle's Argentinian winger, spoke to his compatriots Carlos Tevez, Sergio Aguero and Pablo Zabaleta after City's triumph on Tyneside. "It's still going to be hard for them because QPR will make it hard," said Gutierrez. "It just depends on Manchester City now. They know what might happen if they don't win, so I think they are going to be really focused."
www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/may/07/manchester-city-joleon-lescott-qpr
QPR's Mark Hughes heads back to Manchester City with double agenda
Manager has been aware of the 'ominous' fixture since he got to Loftus Road in January and is ready to settle a score
It is the morning of 19 December 2009. When Mark Hughes switches his phone on he fields a series of calls from friends and reporters telling him he is about to be sacked by Manchester City.
At his local newsagents this prediction is already emblazoned in headline form across the backpage of a tabloid but, when Hughes seeks clarification from City, none seems forthcoming. Ominously the previously supportive press officer is said to be "away on a trip" and, by now, the radio airwaves are crackling with speculation that Roberto Mancini is the club's new manager in waiting.
It is a Saturday and in a matter of hours City are kicking off at home against Sunderland. Hughes and his staff debate what to do. With the silence from the boardroom still deafening they prepare the players as normal, take their seats in the dugout and oversee a 4-3 win over Steve Bruce's side. Within minutes of the final whistle Hughes is told to clear his desk while Mancini prepares to be publicly anointed as his successor.
During the past few years City have done a lot of things extremely well, notably some life‑changing charity work locally and worldwide, but they handled Hughes's departure appallingly.
The fear now at the Etihad Stadium is that this crass behaviour could come back and bite them. On Sunday Mancini's team need to beat Hughes's Queens Park Rangers at Eastlands to be sure of winning the title. Should City stumble, the notion that it might be karma in action will prove impossible to resist.
"There's a big irony in that it's him we're up against," says Joleon Lescott, one of several City first‑teamers who were either signed by the legendary Manchester United striker or worked under him. "Mark Hughes was a great boss and he was very good to me."
If the knowledge that Hughes inspired extraordinary loyalty from many City players, Carlos Tevez foremost among them, will be irrelevant on Sunday, the reality that QPR require a point to be certain of avoiding relegation is making everyone at the Etihad distinctly queasy.
By way of added spice not only does Hughes's backroom team contain former City employees including Mark Bowen, Eddie Niedzwiecki and Kevin Hitchcock but the team features three Eastlands old boys, Nedum Onuoha, Shaun Wright‑Phillips and Joey Barton.
It has not been forgotten that the former City chief executive Garry Cook resigned in the wake of claims that he had emailed Onuoha's Cancer‑suffering mother, mocking her illness. Or that an investigation by City pronounced there was "foundation" to the accusations.
While Onuoha left for QPR in January Barton departed in the summer of 2007 – a year before Hughes succeeded Sven-Goran Eriksson – in the wake of a training‑ground assault on a team‑mate, Ousmane Dabo, to which he later pleaded guilty in court, thereby incurring a suspended prison sentence plus community service.
Potential sub-plots abound but the principal human-interest storyline promises to be in and around the adjacent technical areas.
Understandably Mancini took a dim view of ill-judged – if not entirely inaccurate – comments from Hughes last autumn in which he described the Italian as "autocratic" and blamed him for Tevez's three‑month disappearance to Argentina.
"Maybe it's a little bit fated that I'm going back to City on the final day," says Hughes. "If we were to get something, it would be a fantastic story. They're going for the title, we're trying to stay in the league. That fixture loomed quite ominously in the distant future when I first took over here [in January]. But maybe now the stars have aligned and things have fallen on our side of the line."
Mancini, whose side have not lost at home all season, will be mindful that Hughes and his staff possess rare, possibly invaluable, knowledge of various City players' little-known technical flaws, tactical weaknesses, preferred tricks and on-pitch foibles. He is also conscious that his Welsh counterpart continues to feel deeply wronged by his dismissal after only 18 months in charge and at a time when City were sixth in the Premier League and had lost only twice since the start of the 2009‑10 season.
"I had all the pain and now other people are getting the gain," Hughes has complained repeatedly. The 48-year-old's mood is hardly enhanced by his managerial career, which had begun promisingly with Wales and then Blackburn Rovers, suddenly striking a few walls. There was a decent season at Fulham followed by a resignation designed to "further my ambitions" but which instead merely saw him ignored by Aston Villa and lose out to Martin O'Neill for the Sunderland job.
Eventually he accepted QPR's offer but the feeling persists, at least for anyone who monitored the laudable transformation he implemented at Blackburn, that Hughes belongs at a bigger club.
The worry is that a man who commands immense affection from not only former players – Craig Bellamy, Shay Given, Tevez and Robbie Savage are just a few of those who will not hear a word said against him – but, equally significantly, a cross-section of junior employees at his former clubs was spoilt by the six‑star luxury he swiftly grew accustomed to with City. Reports of Hughes's demands for bigger and better desks, chairs and computers in an ultimately expanded office at Fulham certainly did not reflect well on a man who did himself few favours with that "autocrat" jibe about Mancini.
At least Sir Alex Ferguson probably enjoyed it. There were a few years when Hughes and his old United manager experienced frosty relations but since the latter's City exit the ice has broken, with Ferguson remembering precisely why he once described the younger, then surprisingly shy, young Welshman as a "warrior you'd trust with your life".
Now he has no option but to pin his title hopes on one of Old Trafford's great centre‑forwards and to pray that QPR's players can somehow replicate their manager's old brand of brilliance and brutality. "I just wish Sparky was still playing," says Ferguson. "But Mark was sacked in a very unethical way and he'll remember that."
Former manager's Eastlands legacy
Joelon Lescott Became one of the world's most expensive defenders when Mark Hughes' City paid Everton £22m in August 2009
Carlos Tevez Joined City in July 2009. Got on well with Hughes, who defended him when he fell out with Roberto Mancini in September
Gareth Barry Another who arrived in the summer of 2009 after Hughes fought off Liverpool's approach for the England midfielder
Nigel de Jong City paid Hamburg £18m for the combative Holland midfielder and he quickly became a regular starter in Hughes' team
Pablo Zabaleta One of Hughes' first signings, unheralded at £6.45m from Espanyol. Has become a key squad member
Vincent Kompany Had a slow start to his City career after Hughes signed him in August 2008 but has since become the hugely influential captain
www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/may/07/mark-hughes-qpr-machester-city
GUARDIAN
Joleon Lescott: If City can close the title out it would be unreal
• 'We've been nervous at times but we deserve to be there'
• 'I came to this club to make history,' says Yaya Touré
Manchester City may be only 90 minutes from wrapping up the Premier League but Joleon Lescott has urged the club's fans to "not get carried away" in the run‑up to the title decider this weekend.
City face a Queens Park Rangers side led by their former manager Mark Hughes on Sunday. Their superior goal difference dictates that, whatever Manchester United do at Sunderland, a win will make Robert Mancini's team champions.
"I'd say to our fans, keep a lid on it this week and let's not get carried away. If it happens on Sunday, they can celebrate then," said the City centre‑half. "It's in our hands but there's another vital game to go." Lescott knows that a stumble would render City's hard‑fought win at Newcastle United last Sunday irrelevant.
"It's a massive game at the weekend. It's not all over yet but, if we could close the title out, it would be unreal. You dream of these things. I never once thought: 'Yeah, I'm bound to win the Premier League.' But it was always in my mind. It will be crazy days if we win it. We've been nervous at times this season but we deserve to be up there.
"When I first arrived here [from Everton in 2009] it was more hope that we could win the league rather than real belief. But we've developed and got more players and are all starting to really believe. It's developed over a period of time. It's been a growing feeling."
Now Hughes, the man who signed Lescott for City, and a QPR team battling relegation, stand in the way of Mancini's ambitions. "There's a bit of irony in that it's him we're up against," said Lescott. "Mark Hughes was a great boss and he was very good to me."
When City lost 1-0 at Arsenal in early April the title looked Old Trafford bound but five successive victories, including a home win against Manchester United, have altered the Premier League landscape.
"It would have been crazy to have given it up after Arsenal," said Lescott. "That would have been silly. There was no chance of that happening. It would have been criminal. I don't think there was any way that could happen here because of the attitudes of the players. At this level of our careers we are not going to just give up when we get close to something like this. The lads I play with have a never-say-die attitude."
Yaya Touré, who scored the decisive goals at Newcastle to put the title within City's reach, said: "Always I have said this club can go far, this club can win something. Last year we won the FA Cup and we have to continue like that and next week try to win the game against QPR.
"We know it's going to be tough but I believe in this team, I believe in the players we have. We have some fantastic players. I have always said I came to this club to make history even if some people said I came for different things. I am going to keep telling them I came to this club to make history and that is my first objective, to help make the club into a successful football club." Jonas Gutierrez, Newcastle's Argentinian winger, spoke to his compatriots Carlos Tevez, Sergio Aguero and Pablo Zabaleta after City's triumph on Tyneside. "It's still going to be hard for them because QPR will make it hard," said Gutierrez. "It just depends on Manchester City now. They know what might happen if they don't win, so I think they are going to be really focused."
www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/may/07/manchester-city-joleon-lescott-qpr
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