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With each defeat or uninspiring draw the tabloid penchant for inserting a ruptured United badge at the top of the page added dramatic effect to the latest crisis engulfing Old Trafford.
Hughes is a dry character, a man who would rather roll his eyes in exasperation than engage in the media warfare that has sustained and energised Ferguson.
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But the 46 year-old will have noted the warning signs in recent weeks which suggested that the Manchester Citycrest was beginning to resemble the San Andreas Fault and Hughes will already know where it all went wrong.
Robinho’s naked flirtation with Barcelona, the disastrous home draws against Fulham, Burnley and Hull City, the failure of chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak to discuss extending a contract that had just 18 months left to run.
And finally, fatally, this week’s revelation of chief executive Garry Cook’s discussions with Guus Hiddink’s agent, Cees van Nieuwenhuizen.
At least talks with Roberto Mancini early this month took place away from the public glare, hammering a nail into Hughes’s coffin, but the public airing of the Hiddink link was the endgame.
So, for the 14th time since Ferguson arrived at Old Trafford in Nov 1986, City are going to recruit a new manager.
Hughes has had 564 days to tame the beast that is Manchester City and failed, but he can at least take comfort in the fact that few managers will have lost their job having lost just two league games before Christmas and with their team in a major cup semi-final.
But that is no longer enough for the world’s richest football club.
Despite the earnest talk of Al-Mubarak, Cook and Simon Pearce, Sheikh Mansour’s strategic communications director, that City would do things differently, that patience and mature growth were key pillars of their blueprint for the club, Abu Dhabi’s Manchester City are really no different to Roman Abramovich’s Chelsea.
Ever since Sheikh Mansour dislodged Thaksin Shinawatra as City owner in Sept 2008, Hughes has been on borrowed time. Al-Mubarak, Cook and Pearce might argue otherwise, but their failure to offer the Welshman a new contract is the case for the prosecution on that one.
But in fairness to Sheikh Mansour and his senior officials at Eastlands, they did stick with Hughes at the end of last season, despite his failure to secure European qualification. He was given £120 million to spend in the summer, which took his outlay on new players to the £200 million mark. But there has long been a sense that the long-term project at City has no place for Hughes and his close-knit backroom team.
But for Hughes’s loyalty to his coaching team, who he brought from Blackburn to Eastlands in June 2008, he might just have considered resigning on Thursday following the news of Cook’s Hiddink investigation. Yet like Sven-Goran Eriksson before him, Hughes soldiered on, despite the inevitability of his exit.
Hughes’s downfall has not just been City’s recent results that had seen them win just once in the league in 10 games prior to yesterday’s clash with Sunderland. His inability to coax the best from his big-money signings has proven to be his Achilles’ heel. Replacing Richard Dunne with Joleon Lescott has been a more prosaic failing.
Robinho, the £32.5m British record signing, has proven to be a classic example of acting with haste and repenting at leisure. A panic buy in the final minutes of the Sept 2008 transfer window — an impact signing to signal Abu Dhabi intent — the Brazilian has been a disaster.
Lazy and uninterested away from Eastlands, Robinho has proven too lightweight and predictable to succeed in the Premier League. He doesn’t want to be at City and, despite the denials, Hughes would have been glad to see the back of him in January.
Like Robinho, Emmanuel Adebayor started well before sliding back into the form that prompted Arsène Wenger to cut his losses when City came calling with a £25 million cheque in July. Carlos Tévez, another player whose former employers hardly fought tooth-and-nail to keep, has also flattered to deceive.
Hughes’s decision to drop both Robinho and Adebayor against Sunderland was significant, but too late. The rot had already set in, something that had become apparent to Al-Mubarak and Cook during the 1-1 draw at home to Hull last month.
They resisted the urge to dismiss him then — patience, remember — but the 3-0 surrender at Spurs in midweek was the final straw.
Significantly, the Hughes loyalists within the City hierarchy conceded privately after the Hull game that the sands were shifting beneath the manager’s feet.
Hughes was a blue-chip player, a legendary figure at Manchester United and Chelsea, but he played in an era when egos were stamped upon rather than stroked.
The irony is that the likes of Robinho and Adebayor would not have laid a glove on Hughes as a player. Their inability to deliver for him as a manager, though, has cost him his job.
Hughes is a dry character, a man who would rather roll his eyes in exasperation than engage in the media warfare that has sustained and energised Ferguson.
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But the 46 year-old will have noted the warning signs in recent weeks which suggested that the Manchester Citycrest was beginning to resemble the San Andreas Fault and Hughes will already know where it all went wrong.
Robinho’s naked flirtation with Barcelona, the disastrous home draws against Fulham, Burnley and Hull City, the failure of chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak to discuss extending a contract that had just 18 months left to run.
And finally, fatally, this week’s revelation of chief executive Garry Cook’s discussions with Guus Hiddink’s agent, Cees van Nieuwenhuizen.
At least talks with Roberto Mancini early this month took place away from the public glare, hammering a nail into Hughes’s coffin, but the public airing of the Hiddink link was the endgame.
So, for the 14th time since Ferguson arrived at Old Trafford in Nov 1986, City are going to recruit a new manager.
Hughes has had 564 days to tame the beast that is Manchester City and failed, but he can at least take comfort in the fact that few managers will have lost their job having lost just two league games before Christmas and with their team in a major cup semi-final.
But that is no longer enough for the world’s richest football club.
Despite the earnest talk of Al-Mubarak, Cook and Simon Pearce, Sheikh Mansour’s strategic communications director, that City would do things differently, that patience and mature growth were key pillars of their blueprint for the club, Abu Dhabi’s Manchester City are really no different to Roman Abramovich’s Chelsea.
Ever since Sheikh Mansour dislodged Thaksin Shinawatra as City owner in Sept 2008, Hughes has been on borrowed time. Al-Mubarak, Cook and Pearce might argue otherwise, but their failure to offer the Welshman a new contract is the case for the prosecution on that one.
But in fairness to Sheikh Mansour and his senior officials at Eastlands, they did stick with Hughes at the end of last season, despite his failure to secure European qualification. He was given £120 million to spend in the summer, which took his outlay on new players to the £200 million mark. But there has long been a sense that the long-term project at City has no place for Hughes and his close-knit backroom team.
But for Hughes’s loyalty to his coaching team, who he brought from Blackburn to Eastlands in June 2008, he might just have considered resigning on Thursday following the news of Cook’s Hiddink investigation. Yet like Sven-Goran Eriksson before him, Hughes soldiered on, despite the inevitability of his exit.
Hughes’s downfall has not just been City’s recent results that had seen them win just once in the league in 10 games prior to yesterday’s clash with Sunderland. His inability to coax the best from his big-money signings has proven to be his Achilles’ heel. Replacing Richard Dunne with Joleon Lescott has been a more prosaic failing.
Robinho, the £32.5m British record signing, has proven to be a classic example of acting with haste and repenting at leisure. A panic buy in the final minutes of the Sept 2008 transfer window — an impact signing to signal Abu Dhabi intent — the Brazilian has been a disaster.
Lazy and uninterested away from Eastlands, Robinho has proven too lightweight and predictable to succeed in the Premier League. He doesn’t want to be at City and, despite the denials, Hughes would have been glad to see the back of him in January.
Like Robinho, Emmanuel Adebayor started well before sliding back into the form that prompted Arsène Wenger to cut his losses when City came calling with a £25 million cheque in July. Carlos Tévez, another player whose former employers hardly fought tooth-and-nail to keep, has also flattered to deceive.
Hughes’s decision to drop both Robinho and Adebayor against Sunderland was significant, but too late. The rot had already set in, something that had become apparent to Al-Mubarak and Cook during the 1-1 draw at home to Hull last month.
They resisted the urge to dismiss him then — patience, remember — but the 3-0 surrender at Spurs in midweek was the final straw.
Significantly, the Hughes loyalists within the City hierarchy conceded privately after the Hull game that the sands were shifting beneath the manager’s feet.
Hughes was a blue-chip player, a legendary figure at Manchester United and Chelsea, but he played in an era when egos were stamped upon rather than stroked.
The irony is that the likes of Robinho and Adebayor would not have laid a glove on Hughes as a player. Their inability to deliver for him as a manager, though, has cost him his job.