Foreign Owners + Managerial Appointments = Sheer Stupidity

The decision by Manchester City's Arab owners to sack Mark Hughes despite only two defeats this season is frankly ludicrous. Roberto Mancini may have done fairly well at Internazionale, 3 Serie A titles is impressive( albeit the first was handed to them after Juventus were stripped of it due to their involvement in the calciopoli scandal) yet he was shown out of the door because of a failure to progress in Europe. With no managerial experience of the Premier League, there is little or no evidence to show he'll do any better than Hughes was doing. Ok, the welsh manager had seen his side drop points at home to the likes of Burnley, Hull City and Fulham but victories over Arsenal and Chelsea plus an impressive performance at Old Trafford surely pointed towards progress. Hughes' signings of the likes of Shay Given and Craig Bellamy were really paying off, and Carlos Tevez is just starting to hit form, yet a team with so many new players can't be expected to win the title straight away. Unfortunately, it appears that's what the management were expecting, they are hard businessmen and their understanding of football is clearly not the greatest. I'd be surprised if Mancini lasts as long as Hughes did. Another foreign manager replacing a perfectly good British manager, thanks to the stupidity of foreign owners.

Further stupidity of foreign owners who clearly don't know what they are doing is exemplified by Messrs Hicks and Gillett at Liverpool. Their decision to reward the ever-insolent and sarcastic Rafael Benitez with a pricey 4 year contract extension seems to be costing them dearly. Rafa's reputation at Liverpool is based on two trophies won his first two seasons at the club. Yes, the first was the Champions League, but Lady Luck surely played a bigger role than the Spanish boss in that conquest, as first a Steven Gerrard screamer edged them out of the group stage, before Luis Garcia's goal that never crossed the line against Chelsea in the semi-final and then the miracle of all miracles in that incredible final in Istanbul. Their league performance that season was dismal, a 5th place finish, 37 points behind champions Chelsea. Yes, they won the FA Cup the following season but two 3rd places and a 4th place finish between 2006 and 2008 were merely adequate, the Anfield outfit never really threatening to win the title. Last season they came the closest yet but still finished trophiless. With Fernando Torres, Gerrard, Xabi Alonso, Javier Mascherano, Jamie Carragher and Pepe Reina at the top of their game, the team seemed to thrive, but with Alonso gone, Torres and Gerrard unable to stay fit for more than 4 or 5 games in a row and Mascherano, Carragher and Reina not firing on all cylinders, the rest of Rafa's shoddy squad are showing their true colours. Flop signings have been the real hallmark of Benitez's regime, the likes of Fernando Morientes, Ryan Babel, Bellamy, Andrea Dossena, Robbie Keane and Andriy Voronin have all failed to live up to the Kop's standards and the fact the spaniard is still in a job when the likes of Hughes and Alan Curbishley aren't is simply outrageous. Yes, he signed Fernando Torres, but it doesn't take a genius to tell that he's a great player! The foolish North American owners have put themselves in a situation where it would cost more money to sack Benitez than to fail to qualify for the Champions League, an ever more likely prospect given their current league position of 8th, following an appalling seventh league defeat at bottom of the table Portsmouth. 4 wins in 17 games speaks for itself, and elimination from a less-than-daunting Champions League group is surely not good enough for a club of Liverpool's stature. At almost any other club Benitez would be on borrowed time, yet thanks to the financial situation of Liverpool, it looks like he could well be comfortably sailing his big scouse ship into the Europa League and mid-table obscurity in the coming year...