It looks likely that by the time this blog is published, Emmanuel Adebayor will have joined the impressive list of Manchester City signings , adding his name to an already formidable strike force including Craig Bellamy, Roque Santa Cruz, Benjani, Ched Evans, Felipe Caicedo, Valeri Bojinov, Robinho and Tevez.
In Adebayor, City will be buying a player who has scored 62 goals in 142 appearances for Arsenal since he joined the Gunners from Monaco for £7m, although Arsenal fans would claim that too few of these goals came in the 2008/9 season due to a lack of commitment from the Togo international. Mark Hughes, admired by many as a player and a manager, must believe he will be able to motivate Adebayor and succeed where a fellow esteemed veteran of the management game, Arsene Wenger, appears to have failed in recent months.
This will of course be just one of the challenges facing Mark Hughes this season. Despite being armed with a team sheet and a pot of money that most managers can only dream of, Hughes will have to deal with the pressure of the high expectations of the club’s billionaire owners and of the fans. Meeting their expectations will not be easy as a group of brilliant individual players does not necessarily gel as a successful team immediately. Hughes will also have to deal with any fallout from players who do not make the starting eleven regularly, which is particularly difficult when these players will be extremely wealthy young men, who do not need to work beyond their football careers and will almost certainly be prone to bouts of petulance and egotism.
Will the Blues fans have the patience, if required, to wait for trophies from their team? I hope so, because none of them will want to follow the path that the other wealthy team of Blues took after they sacked Mourinho.
However even as I write this piece about all the pitfalls that may lie ahead for Hughes and City, I can not deny that it’s a great time to be a city fan. Like most football fans out there I’d love a group of billionaires to throw money at my club and put together a team like Hughes is putting together. If City can break into the top four, the most exciting league in the world will become that little more exciting, and this will give hope to all fans of teams lingering in mid-table mediocrity that every dog really does have its day.
