what the papers say

Away-day blues

Sunday's defeat dominates Monday's headlines.

The Times

"Soft-touch Manchester City’s slide continues"

Somewhere on the shores of the Persian Gulf, an outsized television will have been turned off last night with an irritated flick of a switch. It cannot have taken long for the distinguished gentlemen of the Abu Dhabi United Group for Investment and Development to encounter the same frustrations that have been driving Manchester City’s supporters to distraction for the best part of four decades and, if they imagined that a sprinkling of their vast wealth was all that it needed to effect a transformation, they are having to think again.

As things stand, two months after becoming the world’s richest club in a takeover that remains the most surreal development of what at times has been an extraordinary Barclays Premier League campaign, City are closer to the Coca-Cola Championship than the Champions League. After a demoralising defeat in which they were outfought and outmuscled by struggling Bolton, they are only two points off the relegation zone and the giddiness of September 1, the crazy day that witnessed the arrival of new money and of a bona fide super-star in Robinho, is quickly giving way to the kind of gallows humour that is a necessary part of every City supporter’s DNA.

For Mark Hughes, a man whose best years of a distinguished career were spent on the other side of the Manchester football divide, these are troubling times. Thankfully for him, the club’s new owners appear to have rather more patience and sense than the trigger-happy Thaksin Shinawatra, who sacked Sven-Göran Eriksson on a whim last season, but that will not lessen Hughes’s concern at his team’s struggle to make the most of their undoubted flair.

When he travels to Abu Dhabi to meet Sheikh Mansour in a fortnight, it will be to tell him that the priority in the transfer market in January has to be strength of personality rather than more ball-juggling flair of the type brought by Robinho.

At times this season, with Robinho and, indeed, Stephen Ireland pulling the strings, City have been almost unplayable, but at others they have been abject. Occasionally these peaks and troughs have come in the same match, but yesterday it was just about all bad. For 77 minutes it seemed that their meagre efforts would merit a goalless draw, but they were caught on the counter-attack, after Robinho lost the ball in midfield, and Ricardo Gardner gave the home team an unexpected lead. Eleven minutes later, with his team chasing the game, Richard Dunne, the City captain, sliced a cross by Gardner into his own net and the game was up.

What will trouble Hughes most is that he has been unable to impose on City the kind of personality and aggression that he demanded of his teams when in charge of Blackburn Rovers and, before that, Wales. In other words, City are a soft touch and, while that might have been glossed over by the controversial nature of some of their previous defeats, away to Wigan Athletic and Middlesbrough, there was no disguising it here. Nor was Hughes trying to.

“You have to look at the personnel that we have,” Hughes said. “We are a team that is technically very good, but on occasions we need different qualities and unfortunately at the moment we don’t have the variety of players to do that to any extent. We need to be stronger both mentally and physically.”

Bolton are the antithesis of this City team and, while that description also extends to a complete lack of flair, this was a triumph of will over skill. Rarely will you see a team line up as defensively at home as Bolton did in the first half, but as the afternoon wore on, with Gary Cahill and Gretar Steinsson throwing themselves into tackles and Gavin McCann and Fabrice Muamba getting a firm grip of midfield, they grew in belief. So did the home crowd and, when Gardner, a substitute, just about converted Steinsson’s cross from six yards with 13 minutes remaining – grateful to see his shot bounce in off the crossbar for his first goal in almost six years – it was as if a giant valve had been released.

Nobody was more relieved than Gary Megson, who, having succeeded in his first objective as Bolton manager last season in a successful battle against relegation, has found approval more elusive this season. “They are not going to boo tonight,” he said of the supporters. “They have seen us have a go today, but, to be fair to us, I think they have seen us do that in every game this season. We have outrun the opposition today. Goals change games. It’s that simple.” A second Bolton goal followed in the closing minutes, with Dunne putting Gardner’s cross past Joe Hart, his own goalkeeper, albeit when under pressure.

Remarkably, it was the eighth own goal of his career, but Hughes declined to point the finger at his captain. The problems, he knows, are elsewhere in his team. He just has to hope that the owners are sensible enough to take his word on it.

The Mirror

"Bottoms Up"

Bolton last night stunned moneybags Manchester City to complete an extraordinary hat-trick of victories by the Premier League's bottom clubs.

Spurs, Wigan and Bolton propped up the table on Saturday morning, but all won at the weekend to prove that the battle for Premier League survival is destined to be a season long affair.

Ricardo Gardner ended Bolton's 350-minute wait for a Premier League goal - but that drought is nothing compared to his own wait for a top-flight strike.

The Jamaican star squeezed in the all-important opener for Gary Megson's men, whose shot-shy run had left them bottom of the table, and ended a personal agony going back 2,138 days to 2002. Bolton ensured victory when Gardner's cross was put into his own net by Richard Dunne, with the result taking them out of the bottom three.

Gardner, who came on as a first-half substitute, said: "Things have not been going well for us lately. Hopefully this can lift our spirits now and we can go on to the next game and do better."

Megson said: "All we've been missing is goals. The performance was similar to any this season, we will have outrun the opposition as we have done in every game too.

"You don't want to be in the bottom three or at the bleeding end of the table, but it is very tight and if you are not scoring goals you are going to be in trouble."

City are marooned in midtable after their second away defeat in a row.

Boss Mark Hughes is due to meet the club's new Abu Dhabi owners to outline plans for the transfer window.

He still needs a centre-forward, a left-back and an experienced keeper. But the Arabs may be reluctant to spend if they are off the pace for a Champions League place.

Hughes hinted at needing new faces, saying: "You have to look at the personnel we have. We are technically gifted but on occasions we need different qualities.

"We have not got the variety of players to be able to do that to any great extent."