Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel
It was never going to take long. In fact, I think pretty much everyone is surprised it’s taken as long as it has. But finally, Sven-Goran Eriksson is back in management, and the FA don’t have to pay TWO s***e managers anymore. This hasn’t come out of the blue either, it’s been common knowledge for weeks that Thaksin Shinawatra would be trying to tempt the Swede to the City of Manchester Stadium as soon as he could, so nobody’s really surprised.
I think we should be. I’ve racked my brains, watched re-runs of England games from the last 5 years, studied City’s squad and consulted ouija boards, and I still can’t understand what’s in it for Sven, or for City. First lets look at things from Sven’s point of view.
Why Man City? Surely the only thing going for them is the money Thaksin will be able to pump into the club, giving them a chance of competing in the transfer market. True, they’ll always get fans in, and will sell shirts, but that’s not a manager’s concern. Someone like Sven must have been hoping for a Champions League club, or at least one in the UEFA Cup, hopefully with a couple of star players to build the team around. Not only are City not in Europe, but in Distain and Barton they’ve just lost their two star players, those the team was built around. Sven has nothing to work with at City, excluding Thaksin’s money.
The problem of course, is that the takeover could take weeks to go through yet. By the time Sven gets his hands on any of this cash, plenty of players will have already moved, or be so far down the road in transfer negotiations that City are just too late to make a difference. It’ll be a Martin O’Neill situation, where he gets a rich new owner, but too late to splash the cash this summer.
From City’s point of view – why Sven? Ok, he’s a big name, and he has “contacts” in Europe apparently. But do they really believe that just because a player has heard of Sven, or knows him, he’d suddenly choose City over Villa? Or Newcastle? I certainly don’t think so.
More importantly this is Man City who scored the lowest number of home goals in Premiership history last year, and then sold their top scorer in Joey Barton. And who do they appoint to bring them more goals, more drama, more excitement? None other than the most boring England manager ever. The man who took the best side England has produced since 1966, and imposed such tight shackles and negative tactics on them that they still can’t break free over a year after he’s gone. So just the man to get Vassell, Corradi & co back amongst the goals, eh?
