Sven Diagrams: -Sven And A New Milan

Noppadol Pattama was addressing the media, which in itself was something of a novelty.

He was about to set the wheels in motion for a process that would end with ex-England manager Sven Goran Eriksson taking charge of City’s aspirations for the 2007-08 season.

Pattama, the legal representative of Thaksin Shinawatra was holding court in front of the UK football press. “Mr Thaksin Shinawatra has officially submitted his bid to buy the Manchester City football club,” motioned the well-dressed Thai advocate, and, with the wave of a suited arm, a most unlikely adventure had begun.

The 29% stakes held by John Wardle and David Makin were to be handed over to the ex-Thai Prime Minister and just as the negotiations got underway, the government in Bangkok announced that Shinawatra’s bank accounts had been frozen back home pending an investigation into massive corruption. From Peter Swales to the present day, the stewardship of Manchester City football club has attracted a rare and colourful community of business people. The freezing of Shinawatra’s accounts immediately held up £380m of useful investment cash, a tangled story which could have only one denouement: Shinawatra passed the Premier League’s fit and proper persons test and clinched the deal, money or no money, funny goings on or no funny goings on.

Having been linked as Stuart Pearce’s possible successors, Ronald Koeman, Gerard Houllier and Louis van Gaal were suddenly jettisoned as the media began to focus on a new upgraded list of favourites. Rumours had swirled around Juande Ramos, Co Adriaanse, Mark Hughes and Claudio Ranieri too, but the Mirror reported on 20th June 2007 that it was the well-mannered Swede that had actually been interviewed and offered the post.

Selling “one of the country’s most important clubs to an Asian businessman of questionable repute“, as Ian Ladyman put it in the Daily Mail, on June 23rd, was in hindsight an ironic development for a club at the time still setting the standards for unpredictability and brinkmanship. Some saw Eriksson as damaged goods after his 5-year spell with England. Others simply held their breath as usual, as the great ship Manchester City once again veered off into uncharted waters.

Summer outgoings had already started flowing like one of United Utilities overflow pipes, with Joey Barton, Trevor Sinclair, Hatem Trabelsi, Stephen Jordan and DaMarcus Beasley all taking their prodigious talents elsewhere, as did the more widely appreciated Sylvain Distin. In fact, City were one of five Premier League clubs who were yet to sign anyone during the summer window. Supporters fretted. Clocks ticked. An opening day fixture at West Ham drew ever nearer.

Little did we know.

By the time City’s opening fixture loomed on 11th August, Eriksson had blown the dust off his contacts book and signed a brand-new side.

Meanwhile, the rumour mill went into overdrive. Could Sven still manage? Hadn’t he wasted England’s Golden Generation? And what about all those glamorous girlfriends flickering their eyelashes at the high-hairlined smoothy? None of the white noise seemed to phase Eriksson, who spoke eruditely of his plan to turn Manchester into another Milan, with two clubs competing at the very top of European football.

“My first job,” he told Chris Bailey of the Evening News, “is to make sure that the team is better than it was last year.” Following the execrable Pearce, this task would be accomplished merely by scoring a goal or two. Shifting the comatose bulk that was Manchester City further up towards the game’s big hitters might be a tougher ask, however. The squad needed immediate surgery and Eriksson’s first move was to bring in a goal-scorer.

Neil Custis, the Sun’s so-called Manchester football correspondent, bristled with Old Trafford disdain as he began his piece, “Rolando Bianchi says he has always dreamed of scoring goals for AC Milan. Instead, today he is off to Manchester City…” The jokes came thick and fast in those early days and nobody picked the critics up on them. It was open house. Little City were at it again. This was a period dominated utterly by Manchester United and Arsenal, with Chelsea and Liverpool the  in-and-out supporting cast. City were not on the map and could therefore be laughed out of the room.

“Amazingly Bianchi managed more goals in Serie A last season,” trumpeted Custis, “than all five of City’s attackers last season.” This was incredible but undeniably true, Bernardo Corradi (5), Georgios Samaras (4), Darius Vassell (3), Emile Mpenza (3), Paul Dickov (0) the miscreants being compared.

The 1200 fans travelling to Doncaster for Eriksson’s opening pre-season friendly witnessed an immediate change of tone with City managing to keep possession for longer than 2 passes at a time and showing worrying signs of what seemed to be cohesion. As Bianchi scored against Orgryte on the club’s tour of Sweden, Eriksson brought in ex-Barcelona and Benfica midfielder Geovanni and FC Sion’s Swiss Under 21 captain Gelson Fernandes. A day later in came Elano Blumer, Shakhtar’s midfield orchestrator, and Javi Garrido, Real Sociedad’s left back. Suddenly, Bulgarians Valeri Bojinov and Martin Petrov were at the front door, baeing pushed through the entrance by Croatian international Vedran Corluka.

Having been juggling damp dreams of long-range donkey kicks from Ousmane Dabo and Danny Mills, suddenly City fans were watching a thoroughbred cavalry arriving.

Adeptly keeping the fragrant Nancy Dell’Ollio, his expensively dressed Italian “friend”, away from the marauding Bulgarian lothario Bojinov, reportedly a one-man phenomenon in the night clubs of Sofia, the Swede was about to light the blue touch paper on a season that no one would forget in a hurry.

Richard Williams in the Guardian hailed the new season with a double page spread on “The Eriksson Blueprint: how to build an entire team from scratch in two months“. Williams introduced his piece thus, reducing City’s starry-eyed following to neanderthals, by saying “A television crew was wandering around Manchester City’s ground yesterday, mischievously asking customers at the superstore to name their club’s new signings. It took a while before they found someone who could get beyond ‘a Brazilian, an Italian, a bloke from Eastern Europe…'”. Williams cheap laughs would be looking out of date as soon as 24 hours later as Eriksson’s new charges breezed into Upton Park.

“Sven is in Heaven”, shouted the Mirror headline on Monday morning, after a slick dismantling of the Hammers in a sun-drenched 2-0 win. Goals from Bianchi and Geovanni brought the house down and plugged the jokes before they had even dried in print. If the Mirror’s headline has a chilling irony to it today, the Guardian’s Martin Kelner enjoying the first Match of the Day of the season thus – “at least no one asked if City’s foreigners would fancy it on a cold night in Middlesbrough” – would also be a taste of bitter things to come, pre-empting the Swede’s inglorious nadir on Teesside ten months later, as his City tenure came to a tearful conclusion. At this stage, however, there were only tears of joy.

“You gave me joy at last,” Peter Ferguson in the Mail quoted the Swede as saying to his players in the Upton Park dressing rooms. Joy was the predominant emotion on the terraces at Upton Park too. A truly unforgettable day, even in the light of what has transpired since. A midweek win over Derby County showed Eriksson was not just about flashy foreign signings either, as academy graduate Michael Johnson fired in a sumptuous winner with the outside of his right foot. When Geovanni did something broadly similar in the Manchester derby the following weekend, Sven’s City were sitting pretty at the top of the Premier League. “New Kings of Manchester” yelled Oliver Holt’s report in the Mirror. The Plan was running years ahead of schedule after just two weeks of Eriksson’s inaugural season.

Johnson’s goal against Derby was City’s first in a home game since New Year’s Day. It was August 15th. If Stuart Pearce’s mind-numbingly dull approach to the game had threatened to put us all to sleep, Eriksson’s vivid tactical approach was the most invigorating of wake-up calls. As well as Johnson, the emergence of Micah Richards and Joe Hart revealed more young talent on the up. By the end of the year, with the initial euphoria settling down, City were motoring in 4th place, buoyant and unrecognisable from the inert porridge of Pearce’s reign. There were moments of incredible quality too. Elano’s swinger against Newcastle is still spoken about today, a thumping confident finish from 30 yards out by a playmaker of considerable panache.

City’s football had become unrecognizable from the unmitigating stodge of PearceBall. Elano and Johnson stroked passes with disdain, Petrov jinked down the left wing swinging immaculate crosses into the middle, Corluka and Garrido stormed the wings in support, Richards and Dunne blocked everything that came their way, even Didi Hamman seemed to have come to life in the vivid patterns Eriksson demanded from his line-ups. Perhaps only upfront did City fail to find a talisman to knock in all of the chances being created, an Achilles heel that had dogged Sven’s England too.

Despite the glee, something had to give. A balloon-strewn goalmouth (City balloons at that) at Bramall Lane saw a fiasco of an FA Cup exit, less vibrant league form began a drop to the edges of the European places, as the critical Manchester Derby at Old Trafford approached.

The 50th anniversary of the Munich air disaster had seen a plethora of articles in the mainstream press almost willing the “inevitable” to happen, a burst of ugly noise from the City end and the vitriolic headlines would write themselves. On the day, Sven’s “Perfect Day” as the papers then duly noted, the silence spoke for itself, iconic images of scarves held high, the managers laying wreaths and somnambulist Zimbabwean striker Benjani heading City into dreamland with a 2-0 win at a place that had become synonymous with outright disaster and serial embarrassment.

Oddly, Eriksson’s star was soaring with the fans but not with Shinawatra, reportedly already looking at a replacement for the following season. This shabby treatment went down like a sack of bricks with the faithful and, as City’s challenge petered out amongst the rancour and the uncertainty leaking from the owner’s cabal of advisers, the noise in support of a suddenly beleaguered boss grew and grew.

Sven Must Stay and Leave Our Sven Alone banners began to appear and the late-season defeat at Anfield brought a crescendo of support for the coach, City fans chanting Leave our Sven Alone to the watching board members. With Shinawatra’s mind made up, a suitably messy end was unravelling. City had reverted to type. Players downed tools in the final game of the season at Middlesbrough and an 8-1 shellacking brought the reign of the quiet Swede to a catastrophic end. He did not deserve this as his epilogue. A season that had gone off like a shell was ending up exploding in our faces. Eriksson’s legacy was to set City on the path to where they find themselves today. Those first steps towards nullifying United’s enormous advantage were taken with City’s double over the Reds in 2007-08. To make Manchester a second Milan sounded ridiculous at the time, but look where we have come. Not only has parity with United been achieved but the blue boat has sailed clean past a leaking Old Trafford and on over the top of the football wave. European and World Champions in 2023 means those first faltering steps under Eriksson have now been cemented for posterity and adorned with the trappings of serial success.

Sven Goran Eriksson played a crucial part in opening hearts and minds to the possibilities that United could be tamed, caught and surpassed, that tangible success was not a pipedream and that players of international class would not look out of place wearing the sky blue of Manchester City. As he takes leave of the football world, the discreet Swede will be warmly remembered in this part of the world for the first glimpses he showed us of a rich future to come.