So old Sparky has been shown the exit at Eastlands. Hands up if that shocked you. Alright, the powers that be at City handled the matter with as little class as you’d expect based on the vulgar way they throw their money around, but I struggle to feel much sympathy for Hughes. Two Footed Tackle does a fine job representing my own perspective, so I won’t waste space here repeating that view.

In any case, if Hughes really is shocked and hurt about being so unceremoniously thrown out then I’m sure the £3m golden parachute will help soften the landing back on terra firma. Although he’s proven himself incapable of dealing with the biggest of ego-filled dressing rooms, there’s few managers out there who can deal with such a set up, so his job prospects are unlikely to have been damaged.

He’ll be fine, let’s not shed any tears for Sparky. However, one point I did want to pick up on is the talk about targets. When City announced the firing of Hughes and hiring of Mancini they said:-

A return of two wins in 11 Premier League games is clearly not in line with the targets that were agreed and set.

Most people feel that Hughes’ goose was cooked somewhere within the run of seven draws that started with the 1-1 at Villa Park. Who knows? It probably doesn’t matter since he’s largely been regarded as a dead man walking short of churning out close to miraculous results.

But Hughes claims to feel aggrieved on the basis that he was on target which he revealed thus:-

At the beginning of the season, I sat down with the owners and it was agreed that a realistic target for the season would be sixth place in the Premier League, or in the region of 70 points.

There’s clearly shenanigans somewhere since 70 points would have achieved at least 4th place in 11 out of the 17 Premiership seasons to date. Indeed, City’s current haul of 29 points from 17 games can be extrapolated out to 65 points by the end of the season. Maybe Hughes feels that’s “in the region of 70 points”, but 5 points is a huge difference in this league. They are going well for sixth, but is that really City’s aspiration this season? Sacking Hughes suggests otherwise.

But why am I writing about Mark Hughes and Man City? Several reasons. Firstly, I know I’ve done the topic of our steady, sensible re-building at Aston Villa to death – the five-year-plan if you will – but it’s worth considering that Citeh seem willing to take a step backwards here in order to take two forwards. Mancini may enjoy a “new manager syndrome” bounce over the next couple of less challenging fixtures, but with a very tough January program ahead, this could easily end up two steps backwards and only one in right direction.

I’m assuming that they wanted their new man on board in time to chuck some more money around during the January transfer window. Oh good, throw more money at the problem, that should help. Surely genuine City fans must really fear that they’re about to embark on a terrible cycle of new managers being given no end of money, but little time to meet their owners’ expectations? Seriously, how long do you think Mancini will get?

Maybe this move will prove to be a stroke of genius, but I remain to be convinced. We’ll find out at the end of the season, but I firmly believe that you have to take the big picture view and, if you’re really serious about building a club into a machine capable of operating at the very upper echelons, you have to measure progress over a number of seasons, not games.

Mark Hughes was never the man to take Citeh where they want to go, but by dropping him in this fashion the owners are saying that Macini is.  Maybe that’s the case, but I doubt it.  I think they would have been better served by seeing out the season with Hughes at the helm in order to truly assess their progress.  Things can change very quickly in football and a season can be defined by just a handful of games.

At the end of November, after the loss to West Ham, the draws against Burnley and Tottenham, and despite the thumping victory over Bolton, some of MON’s more vocal critics among the Villa faithful began spewing their feckless criticisms online. Four games later, seven unanswered goals, four victories – including one over Man Utd at Old Trafford – and, to coin a popular song, it’s all gone quite over there.

However, I have to share one comment I read on a Villa site today that essentially begged the question of how far we could expect to progress in Champions League unless we add more quality to the squad. I know, it’s not even Christmas yet, but I’m serious. Apparently this person feels that we’ll only be able to mount successful campaigns at home and abroad next season if Randy Lerner splurges some more cash, otherwise it will be a struggle. I’m not joking here, I couldn’t make this stuff up, this is what’s on their mind right now.

Personally, I remain cautiously optimistic about our prospects this season. I’m convinced that we have a defensive unit among the strongest in the league and the attacking personnel capable of scaring the daylights out of the very best. This is the squad MON has been assembling piece by piece since he arrived in August ’06, a little over 3 years ago.

While it might pale in comparison to the cash flowing through Eastlands in recent years, MON’s net spend of close to £90m on players is not chump’s change. There’s no question that Randy Lerner has injected the necessary funds to move the club forward steadily, but hasn’t gone crazy by any stretch. Again, I realise I may well be resembling a broken record here, but this is exactly the way it should be done in my opinion.

To go some way towards proving the point, I thought it might be fun to compare MON’s record alongside the record that got Hughes fired. Perhaps I’ll be able to do a similar exercise should Mancini be unceremoniously shown the exit door some time in the future and we’ll see which club has progressed the furthest.

So here’s a look at how Hughes’ Citeh have performed in the Premiership since his first game in charge, which just happens to have been the 4-2 loss at Villa Park, against MON’s record during the same period of time (i.e. August ’08 to date):-

In fairness to Hughes, despite him inheriting a team with a few gems courtesy of Sven-Goran Eriksson and later having the GDP of a small country to spend himself, this does put his first and part of his second season up against MON’s third and fourth season to date.

So why not compare MON’s first 55 Premiership games with Sparky’s? No reason at all, check it out:-

Very interesting, no?

I suppose your own perspective dictates how you view these tables. For instance, you might think that since Hughes had vastly more resources to work with, he should have done a lot better with his first 55 games than MON did. Especially given the vastly different nature of the clubs the two managers walked into. If that’s the case, you may well see the sense in giving Hughes the elbow at this stage.

On the other hand, you might think that the second table illustrates just how well MON did during his first 18 months and, additionally, the first one reveals what happens if you stick with the plan.

Is the glass half-empty, or half-full?

For me it’s half-full and, possibly more importantly, it’s a rather large glass. I’m not sure just yet, but the aroma suggests that the contents swirling around inside could well be an ’85 Haut-Brion. By the end of the season we’ll all know for sure.