Slipperduke
The Camden Cad
The legendary British football commentator Stuart Hall once earned himself a telling-off from then-Manchester City manager Kevin Keegan for continually referring to Maine Road as, “The Theatre of Comedy.” Keegan implored Hall to show the club some respect, but as Hall later pointed out, sometimes it’s impossible to comply. Of all the clubs in Britain, barring perhaps Tottenham and Newcastle, Manchester City seem the most determined to make fools of themselves.
Thaksin Shinawatra, their controversial new chairman, has quickly familiarised himself with the wider role of the club and was on hand this week to give everybody in football something to laugh about. He told a business conference in Dubai that he would be reviewing Sven Goran Eriksson’s position at the end of the season. That’s the Eriksson who has taken City from the brink of relegation to the fringes of Europe, is it? The Eriksson who secured a rare double of victories over their hated Red rivals? I like people like Shinawatra. They make life so much more entertaining.
Eriksson took over at Eastlands last July, just one month before the start of the season. He inherited a threadbare squad that had only just avoided the drop, was given a huge pile of money and told to get to work. I still smile when I think about the abuse he got for signing players that he’d watched on video. Where was he going to go in July to watch live football? And besides, he hadn’t spent his sabbatical watching tennis. He didn’t pluck Elano from a lucky dip, he’d seen him score twice for Brazil against Argentina at The Emirates. He didn’t buy Martin Petrov because he liked his name. He bought him because he knows European football and could tell that he was one of the best left-wingers on the continent. In short, he assembled a lot of quality players in a very short time. Not all of them have settled in, but that’s to be expected when you have such a scattergun approach to recruitment.
Patience is a virtue that newcomers to football never seem to understand. It’s far easier just to assume that if you throw a lot of expensive players together, you’ll have a brilliant team. It doesn’t work like that though. Players are human, they’re not the collection of numbers that appear on games like Football Manager. They need time to settle, a chance to bond with their colleagues. The manager needs to learn how to use them, to figure out how they react to setbacks. The club needs to grow over a period of time and that can only happen with stability. If Shinawatra brings in a new manager now, he’ll have to start again with new players and all the progress of this season will be lost.
It’s the fans that I feel sorry for. You’ll have to search long and hard to find more loyal supporters than the ones in the sky blue shirts. When City dropped into the third flight of English football, they were still getting crowds of over 30,000 at Maine Road. They’ve been there for this team through thin and thinner and they know they’re onto a good thing with Sven.
Yes, the second half of the season has been very disappointing, but if you’d have offered Eriksson a top-half finish at the start of the season he would have been absolutely delighted. Only Manchester City could see such a vast improvement in fortunes as a reason to sack their manager. If Shinawatra isn’t careful, people will still be laughing at this football team for years to come.
Thaksin Shinawatra, their controversial new chairman, has quickly familiarised himself with the wider role of the club and was on hand this week to give everybody in football something to laugh about. He told a business conference in Dubai that he would be reviewing Sven Goran Eriksson’s position at the end of the season. That’s the Eriksson who has taken City from the brink of relegation to the fringes of Europe, is it? The Eriksson who secured a rare double of victories over their hated Red rivals? I like people like Shinawatra. They make life so much more entertaining.
Eriksson took over at Eastlands last July, just one month before the start of the season. He inherited a threadbare squad that had only just avoided the drop, was given a huge pile of money and told to get to work. I still smile when I think about the abuse he got for signing players that he’d watched on video. Where was he going to go in July to watch live football? And besides, he hadn’t spent his sabbatical watching tennis. He didn’t pluck Elano from a lucky dip, he’d seen him score twice for Brazil against Argentina at The Emirates. He didn’t buy Martin Petrov because he liked his name. He bought him because he knows European football and could tell that he was one of the best left-wingers on the continent. In short, he assembled a lot of quality players in a very short time. Not all of them have settled in, but that’s to be expected when you have such a scattergun approach to recruitment.
Patience is a virtue that newcomers to football never seem to understand. It’s far easier just to assume that if you throw a lot of expensive players together, you’ll have a brilliant team. It doesn’t work like that though. Players are human, they’re not the collection of numbers that appear on games like Football Manager. They need time to settle, a chance to bond with their colleagues. The manager needs to learn how to use them, to figure out how they react to setbacks. The club needs to grow over a period of time and that can only happen with stability. If Shinawatra brings in a new manager now, he’ll have to start again with new players and all the progress of this season will be lost.
It’s the fans that I feel sorry for. You’ll have to search long and hard to find more loyal supporters than the ones in the sky blue shirts. When City dropped into the third flight of English football, they were still getting crowds of over 30,000 at Maine Road. They’ve been there for this team through thin and thinner and they know they’re onto a good thing with Sven.
Yes, the second half of the season has been very disappointing, but if you’d have offered Eriksson a top-half finish at the start of the season he would have been absolutely delighted. Only Manchester City could see such a vast improvement in fortunes as a reason to sack their manager. If Shinawatra isn’t careful, people will still be laughing at this football team for years to come.
