"The reality wasn't exactly what was described and sold to me," he said. "In fairness, we were able to go into the transfer market, but there seemed a focus that players had to be sold, and I realised that maybe the resources weren't in place that I thought."
"If you are single-minded, you have to work purposefully," he reflected, "and if you get to a point where it is untenable and not manageable, then you make the decision to walk away.

"I have been surprised at all the speculation, because I have always been consistent with everyone on the subject of the manager. "Every time I have spoken, I have said the we have the highest confidence in Mark, and I would like to re-iterate that now. Mark will be our manager next season - nothing has changed".

Janey Smucker (far left) in action during Autoglass's 7-0 loss to
Betty's Cupcakes 'n More Under 12's.
At first Janey Smucker, a six year old full-back for Denver's Al's Autoglass Pee Wee Eleven's, didn't understand what the letter in the blue envelope said. It didn't help the first half was in Arabic, or that Janey can only read at a second grade level.

More emerging this morning as to how the downfall of Hughes was planned, and executed, and one which left Hughes a lame duck manager:

It emerged a verbal agreement on Mancini's three-and-a-half-year contract was reached on December 2, as City beat Arsenal in the Carling Cup, but the board wanted to delay the appointment until after tough games against Chelsea, Bolton and Tottenham.

A nice look at the situation from David Conn today, in which, contrary to some opinion, the decision to sack Hughes was very much made by the owners of the club, and not Garry Cook and/or Brian Marwood:

The view began to harden that something did have to change. Hughes had the same first-team coaching staff, including his former Welsh playing colleagues Mark Bowen, Eddie Niedzwiecki and Glyn Hodges, who have worked alongside him since he started out in management with his national team 10 years ago.

It's fitting in a way that this should be one of the last headlines of 2009: Real Madrid deny rumours of €1bn offer from Manchester City owner. If the Noughts was the decade of wildly-inflated transfer fee, the teens will be the decade of the conglomerate owners.
There has been quite a lot of talk since 2008 about how football would eventually succumb to the economic crisis, with once-mighty European clubs swimming in debt, forced to make yearly interest payments equivalent to once-in-a-life-time transfer deals.