Gary is a Hughes Licker...

[Socrates]

Was it MOTD where they were saying that the problem with Mancini was too many draws last season? He had 5 in 21 games, hardly abnormal - Hughes had 8 in 17 which they were lazily lumping into Mancini's record.

[ronk]

[doublethink]

"Sparky had started to edge out the bad guys, the team was coming together and they had lost only one League game. It was ludicrous.....

..."He wasn't taking any nonsense from a few of the players and was easing them out.

"He was getting the players he wanted. I don't think he would have gone into the summer and bought another six, seven, eight players.

"Mark would probably have spotted just a couple of areas where they needed to strengthen. That might have prevented some of the problems they now have with this huge squad.
[/doublethink]

It's curious how he can happily contradict himself. Hughes was making changes (slowly) and getting rid of "bad" players, yet would only have made small changes to the squad.

We were going to make purchases in the January window. Johnson wasn't unlikely, but it would have been a different central midfielder from Vieira. Parker?

I could easily see him having picked up Boateng; Kolorov and Balotelli less likely. He would have gone for another forward though. Bellamy would have stayed so Milner was less likely to come. We'd have picked up a midfielder but Ireland might have hung around. Yaya was already on the radar, but we mightn't have gone for Silva.