Interesting article on Marwood. Raises some good points. Director Of Football hey?
"You bastards," Brian Kidd told his fellow Manchester United players when they heard of Wilf McGuinness's sacking as manager. "You let him down." As Kidd prepares to take over as Manchester City's No2, supporters seeking the men who let down Mark Hughes have focused on the shadowy figure of Brian Marwood, one-time winger for Arsenal and City, commentator, high-class sportswear salesman and éminence grise at Eastlands.
He is effectively Manchester City's director of football, although Hughes, a traditional football man, ensured this title was never used. Marwood was careful not to be seen to be invading Hughes's territory and his role encompassed every area of the club's operations, including the academy and player development.
He is also the unofficial adviser to the club's owners, Abu Dhabi United. Just as Roman Abramovich has relied on Frank Arnesen to ensure his money was being well invested by a succession of Chelsea managers so the Manchester City owner, Sheikh Mansour, and his chairman, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, have Marwood.
However, Arnesen had worked under Bobby Robson at PSV Eindhoven and discovered Jaap Stam and Ruud van Nistelrooy. Marwood's qualifications to do the job seem to lie in his close relationship with the City chief executive, Garry Cook. Both had worked for Nike, for whom Marwood was appointed head of their UK operations in February.
The timing of his arrival appeared significant. The deal that would have taken Kaká from Milan to Manchester had just collapsed, and it was a transfer that Cook had enthusiastically supported but which Hughes appeared cooler towards. Hughes considered that Kaká, like Robinho, was ill-suited to the step-by-step, largely British, recruitment policy that he favoured.
Part of Marwood's role was to be a continental style director of transfers, although the targets in his time at Eastlands were all nominated by Hughes and confirmed by Khaldoon. His task was very specific – to negotiate the contracts. He was at Eastlands only for Hughes's final transfer window; a summer in which more than £60m was spent on Emmanuel Adebayor, Kolo Touré and Joleon Lescott, and it has been suggested he disapproved of all three.
However, sources in the Emirates are insistent that Marwood was generally supportive of the manager. If his opinion changed as City stumbled from draw to draw against Hull, Bolton and Burnley, Khaldoon did not consider his intervention to be decisive. Whether Cook or Marwood wanted Hughes out was largely immaterial. The emirate of Abu Dhabi is not a democracy and although there are technical advisers, they are merely courtiers. Hughes may have believed that Cook and Marwood together engineered his downfall but the likeliest scenario is that they did not fight to keep him in office and happily and quietly began negotiations with a number of potential successors, including Roberto Mancini.
In the end Khaldoon and Sheikh Mansour were the only voices that mattered. Rightly or wrongly, they considered Hughes a limited manager who had made limited use of their unlimited funds. And they acted as they always had: swiftly.
Posted: Sun Dec 20, 2009 10:51 pm