Sven's Departure Leaves Questions Unanswered

By: Alan
Soccer City FC

Soccer City FC's lead contributor Alan takes an in-depth look at the former City manager's saga over the last few weeks.

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I started writing this article on Monday and I’ve found myself adding sections due to developments that are continuing to break regarding Manchester City. Mark Hughes has been installed as manager on a three-year deal, replacing the now manager of Mexico Sven Goran Eriksson who departed Eastlands on Monday morning. Oh, and Gary Cook has been installed as our new executive chairman after he joined from Nike. Our transfer record for a player is also set to be broken for a Brazilian star from Russia. Confused?

There’s been so much activity the past few days it would be easy to forget why Sven was replaced in the first place, but I’m going to attempt to understand why he would have been sacked and look beyond the media’s claims that Shinawatra is an interfering chairman. Rumours circulated two months ago that Sven was going to be sacked as manager, but nothing had been done about it up until Monday - it was inevitable. Many tried to understand the decision, trying to make sense of what had happened, even perhaps looking for somebody to blame. There doesn’t seem to be any justification for the managerial merry-go-round. To the eye it seems a foolish idea to replace the much-loved Sven Goran Eriksson - after all, he did have the backing of the fans, probably even the backroom staff, under him we finished in our highest points position and achieved the unlikely double over United. As first seasons go, it can be considered successful. Stability was needed as it is the key at football clubs, it is the essence of success but the managerial position at City continues to be a revolving door.

It is impossible to blame one individual though because nobody knows exactly what happened. It has been far too easy to blame the chairman, Thaksin Shinawatra, in all of this and he has received the unjust criticism from the footballing world. Of course, I don’t know what really went on myself so I could easily be wrong but the perceptions of Thaksin being an interfering, ruthless chairman aren’t justified - not until we know the facts at least. Perhaps this blame has been placed at his door because in reality he is in charge of the club, he has the final decision on who the manager is and when to sack them. People have been quick to pounce on the claim that his understanding of the game is limited, but a poor run of form does not immediately mean he would sack Sven because of it. Many rumours have stated Shinawatra does not understand why City didn’t finish in the top four come May, as they had done for the first 19 games. The decline in the second half of the season was clearly evident, but I can’t see why Thaksin would sack Sven just for poor results - he has a bigger insight than we do, there must have been more in it than bad results. There must have been another reason for him to make the decision.

Go back to last June when he completed the takeover, one of his first words were "If we were going to dream, I would dream that we would go very far. But the steps towards that dream will take some time." Even in late March, he was pleased with the club’s progress but expectations remained cautious. "At the beginning of the season, I planned that we should end up in the top 10. When we were fourth or fifth for a few months I thought, 'why don't we go for the UEFA Cup?' That's my dream, but because of the way the cup competitions have gone it's not so easy, we will have to fight hard for the rest of the season to be able to go into the UEFA Cup, but we will try our best. It still looks like we will finish in the top 10, which is as according to the original plan.”

He admits here that a top 10 finish would meet his expectations, so why would all of this have changed immediately? Amid rumours of Sven being sacked only a few weeks ago, he stated he recognised the progression of the team as they had moved up five league positions since the 2006/7 campaign. The only evidence available to us is from what he has said himself, but the blame being placed on him isn’t fully justified. I believe that the previous quotations show he understands football a lot more than what he is given credit for. As a politician, he was surely going to be ruthless and decisive but on many occasions he has stated how the steps towards his dream of taking City to Europe and beyond will take some time. Should he make a ruthless decision then I would expect there to be a reason for it, rather than just basing it on a few poor results. Based on what he has publicly said, he realises the team won’t go from relegation battlers to champions of the world in one year. There is a strong possibility of the sacking being down to a difference in how Manchester City was going to achieve the success, rather than the ‘Evil Doctor’ Shinawatra being too controlling.

As owner, Thaksin has an ambition to make the club successful on the pitch and to make it one of the biggest names in the world. As manager, Sven had an ambition to make the club successful on the pitch by taking City into Europe and competing for honours on a regular basis. Both involve making the team successful, but Thaksin views this success as something wider than how Eriksson interprets it. Success would not only mean winning the league or a trophy, in Shinawatra’s eyes it would also mean making City one of the biggest clubs in the world in a business sense through means of merchandise and advertising. There is the potential for the club to be a large global brand, particularly in the Asian market, and this is where the benefit of having a famous footballer comes into play. For the club to become as big as possible, it means signing a famous footballer that will make people sit up and realise the ambition that is trying to be achieved, and to get a foothold in the worldwide market. The coup of ‘signing’ Garry Cook from Nike is a signal that Shinawatra has an ambition for the club to become big on a global scale. Cook was appointed as the club’s executive chairman on June 1st, where he declared “It’s a privilege to join Dr Thaksin here at Manchester City. There is no better opportunity in world football.” Cook will have the responsibility of overseeing City’s budget, as well as the player recruitment programme and expanding the club’s global appeal. He will be involved in the discussions to sign Ronaldinho from Barcelona - the famous player Shinawatra wants.

Just because Shinawatra was involved in talks with the player does not mean he is wanting to control first-team affairs, neither does it mean he will be buying only the players he wants whilst ignoring the manager. City are still a long way off competing in the Champions League which would do wonders to the club‘s advertising and marketing opportunities, but they are in a much better position to sign a famous player that would have a similar impact. It would act as a catapult into the world market and soon the benefits would be reaped. Shinawatra’s involvement can, therefore, be seen as a means of completing his own business and commercial aims as well as ensuring Manchester City have the success on-the-pitch to go with it. It doesn’t mean he wants to interfere in first-team affairs, but whether Sven wanted a Ronaldinho was another matter.

Despite Sven and the chairman both aiming for the club to be a success, Shinawatra wanted to do it with a big-name player and with as much market potential as possible - from a business perspective. Sven, on the other hand, wanted to do it from a footballing perspective and emphasised the importance of team balance and a strong work ethic rather than risking the team balance by the signing of one superstar. Perhaps Sven thought Shinawatra was too interfering because a player was targeted that he didn’t want - but a Ronaldinho is central to Shinawatra’s plans for City. Both aimed for success, but had different ideas of how it would be achieved so someone had to budge. Sven’s ‘sacking’ could have partly been down to a disagreement regarding the direction the club was going in and so from this point of view it was probably the best thing to do in the long-term. The poor results in the second half of the season certainly played their part and Shinawatra’s pride will have been dealt a blow losing to Middlesbrough 8-1 and with the players looking disinterested.

Believe it or not, he prides himself on the football club nearly as much as the fans do, and he craves the success that he feel it deserves. So, does the former Thai leader deserve the criticism and condemnation he has received the past couple of months? Its hard to argue that he does when the evidence doesn‘t indicate so. We know Sven deserved longer but we cannot speculate who is to blame and why it happened until we know the full facts. I trust Shinawatra’s judgement as he will know more than we do, he is intelligent and the media stories against him are unsupported. Targets of a top 10 finish were set at the start of the season and it is presumed Sven was sacked even though this had been fulfilled, thereby giving an impression that the chairman unfairly moved the targets and making the managerial position at City an almost impossible job as a result. I believe that Shinawatra would not, however, simply move the goalposts when it suits him and there was clearly a much deeper problem, one which he believed could not be fixed and he felt action needed to happen.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Shinawatra clearly demonstrates his understanding of the game and the problems he believed were present in the squad last season. “I have heard of Premier League players with a garage full of sports cars and almost a girlfriend for each one. That is no way for an athlete to behave. He should be in the training ground, working. We need a culture of discipline at our club. I want strong leadership from the manager, motivation for young men and I want players who can cope with that.” In fact, he takes a great interest in the whole running of the team, from first-team down to the academy and shows he pays close attention to many aspects of the club. “We won the Youth Cup this season and I am very proud of the young men (he reels off at least six names and descriptions of players who may soon appear in the City first-team squad) and the staff there, like the academy director Jim Cassell. There should be at least five English at the core of every team. We are the English Premier League.” There were even ridiculous rumours about how he placed all of the team up for sale, but they couldn’t be further from the truth. We fell in love with Shinawatra’s ambitions for the club and there isn’t any reason for this to change now. He knows his football and has a love for the game that is similar to ours.

Fact is, he saw that there was something wrong at the club towards the end of last season and he acted - whilst the club’s downfall in results can be expected in football, even the fans would agree that the results against Fulham and Middlesbrough were embarrassing and hard to take. Sven deserved another season, but it had reached a point where the amicable thing to do would be to move their different ways as a manager and a chairman need some trust. There was an obvious difference in views between Sven and Thaksin, so in some ways making the decision to part ways now was correct as it was an already damaged relationship. How the relationship became damaged is not fully known, but Shinawatra cannot be blamed solely.