Arsenal legend Ian Wright has declared that players like Emmanuel Adebayor, Robinho and Joleon Lescott were responsible for Mark Hughes being given the pink slip at Manchester City.
The former Gunner believes that the aforementioned players were overpriced and ultimately led to their gaffer’s exit from Eastlands.
Wright said in his column for The Sun: “When a manager goes into a job, he not only thinks about whether a certain signing could benefit the team, he also thinks whether this player could get him the sack.
“In Robinho, Emmanuel Adebayor and Joleon Lescott, these three signings, for various reasons, contributed to Hughes getting the boot.
“Robinho and Adebayor are not players you would want in the trenches.
“When you hear certain stories coming out of City about Robinho, he doesn’t strike me as the kind of player a manager can hang his hat on, and Adebayor left a club like Arsenal among all sorts of player unrest stories.
“They have not lived up to their very expensive price tags and I have the feeling they will not care less that Hughes has been replaced.”
Switching his focus to the City back line, Wright continued: “Lescott is an excellent player but was a bad signing purely in terms of how much was paid. City effectively got Everton into a headlock and made them sell a player they did not want to.
“Of course, in the end, it was good business for Everton as £24 million is a hell of a lot of money.
“Yet they ended up with a player who, through no fault of his own, was worth nowhere near that amount of money and Lescott has found it very difficult to keep up to the standard of his price tag.”
The former England striker glanced at the task that awaits new boss Roberto Mancini, saying that the Italian could be headed for the chopping block if he does not produce the kind of results that the owners expect of him.
Wright said: “Now, Mancini has been given a three-year contract but I wonder whether he will still be at Eastlands in three years time.
“If he doesn’t start doing well immediately, Mancini will find himself under pressure – particularly as he will buy big next month and City’s owners will once again be expecting immediate results.”
Adithya Ananth, Goal.com UK
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