Manchester City have spent over £125 million since Mark Hughes took over last summer but despite that huge investment, they need to win all six remaining league games to improve on last season’s points tally.
The Spoilerasked back in December whether Hughes was the right man to take City forward, to which only 31% said yes. Following last night’s UEFA Cup exit, it feels like an appropriate time to conduct another straw poll.
The positives of Hughes’ first season have been the respectable European run, the 3-0 win over Arsenal and the fact they have played some fantastic football at times. The biggest success story of an indifferent campaign however has been the emergence of Stephen Ireland, a player Hughes fought to keep in the summer, as arguably the player of the season.
The negatives are fairly obvious: City will almost certainly finish with a worse points haul than last season, they lost in both domestic cups to relegation-threatened lower league teams, they haven’t won a domestic away game since August and Hughes has reportedly struggled to handle his Brazilian stars.
So should he stay or should he go? Tell us with a vote and comment below:
Manchester City/Hamburg, UEFA Cup Qtr-final, 7.45pm, ITV4
Paddy Power and Bet365 are offering 3/1 on Manchester City overcoming their 3-1 deficit in tonight’s match with Hamburg, but the statistics suggest that they will have to perform out of their skins to do so. Our friends at chickendinner say:
» Hamburg have only won five of their 14 away league games and have drawn one and lost four of their five visits to fellow Bundesliga top six sides.
» Despite this, their European record is amazing. The German side have won all five of their UEFA Cup away games, scoring 12 and conceding just three. They have scored at least two in every game and kept three clean sheets.
Hamburg/Man City, UEFA Cup Qtr-Final 1st Leg, 7.45pm, ITV4
Martin Jol’s Hamburg are available at 11/10 with Boylesports to win the home leg of their UEFA Cup quarter-final clash with Manchester City. A glance at their home record suggests that those odds are very generous, say chickendinner:» Hamburg have played 21 matches at the HSH Nordbank Arena, winning 16 of those, drawing three and losing just two.
» In contrast, Manchester City have won just one of their last 19 on the road, drawing seven and losing 11 of those games.
» Only five of the last 14 English UEFA Cup quarter-finalists have progressed
Following last week’s defeat in whatever country Shakhtar Donetsk are from, Spurs coach Harry Redknapp warned us that he would be fielding a crappy side for the second leg. His ‘rotation policy’ failed to pay off last night (despite a brilliant opener from Giovani), but the gaffer remained in high spirits:
“The lads were terrific here and we were very unlucky not to win.”If we didn’t have a cup final coming up, I wouldn’t have been looking to rest players.
“No one wanted to win this tie more than I did. It would have been great to go through. We deserved to win and their coach told me so afterwards.”
Their coach told you so, Harry? That’s almost as good as an actual win, right? Presumably, the irony of focusing on a cup final whose prize is a place in the UEFA Cup isn’t lost on you, Mr Redknapp?
Blues encouraged by draw, Lilywhites’ Euro hopes dashed
FC Copenhagen 2 / Manchester City 2
The Tame Goal of the Week Award goes to City defender Nedum Onuoha, whose side-foot tap somehow found its way past FC Copenhagen keeper Jesper Christiansen. Mark Hughes’ side should have taken three points, but came away with a better result than Manchester Utd did on their last visit to the Parken Stadium (a 1-0 Champions League defeat in 2006).
Shakhtar Donetsk 2/ Tottenham 0
Tottenham visited a ploughed field in the Ukraine and battled well for most of the game. After the game, ‘Arry said he was still taking the UEFA Cup seriously,” then added that he’ll probably play four seventeen-year-olds in next week’s return leg.
Loading ...