Stephen Ireland says Mancini would ‘swing for players’ in training and reveals how Hughes refused to give Ronaldo and Thiago Silva trials at City

In the third part of an exclusive interview with Ladbrokes: Fanzone, Stephen Ireland talks about his memories of playing at Manchester City under Mark Hughes and Roberto Mancini.

In part one he looks back at Saido Berahino’s rebellious streak at Stoke and in part two he chats about training with three Manchester United stars during lockdown.

Several players would say Mancini was not a good guy!

I honestly believe that if it was anyone but Roberto Mancini, my career at Man City would have gone differentl.  I’d have been fine. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great manager with a fantastic CV and he’s achieved a lot. I’m not knocking his ability as a manager, but I think he was brought in with that brief of getting success as quickly as possible, and he didn’t care who he upset in the process.

It’s not just me. I know there’s a handful of players who would say the same… he was just not a good guy. The squad was so good, the players won the trophies for him – it wasn’t him.

The amount of arguments, fights and fists I saw in training, honestly, if only there had been an Amazon documentary back then, with some of the stuff he was doing. Honestly, it was just incredible. The amount of times he and Carlos Tevez would go head-to-head, swinging for each other.. mental stuff. And it was over literally nothing. I don’t know if that was just his tactic to constantly p*** people off.

Maybe he was a genius, maybe he just wanted to p*** everyone off. I don’t know, no one knows. But if it was anyone else who came in, be it Manuel Pellegrini,or Pep Guardiola, I think I would have played a bigger part in things.

The owners met Mancini about 12 months before they appointed him, so I was teed up and ready for him. Mark Hughes’ days were numbered. I don’t know whether they didn’t believe in him or think he was a big enough name, but we started the season off with something like six wins and six draws and they sacked him based on that.

But going back to the summer of that 2009-10 season, I started to feel a little bit like I was being pushed out. It felt like there was a huge name coming in and signing for us every day. One day it was Carlos Tevez, then it was Emmanuel Adebayor, then it was Kolo Toure… it was just nuts. And it was more of the same the following year: David Silva, Yaya Toure, Mario Balotelli, all coming in, one after the other. We’d be sitting at the table together in pre-season and they’d have to add tables to the end because there were so many new players coming in.

And then you had a long list of lads that were leaving, and some of those lads, for me, still served such a purpose within the club. Richard Dunne is a prime example. They got rid of him in 2009, but he should have been part of the furniture. He was so good with the young lads, everyone worshipped him in the changing room and what he said was gospel. No matter what he said, that was it – no one would ever cross him. He needed to be there. He’d have had no issues in putting Balotelli in a headlock if he needed to. Adebayor comes in – a lovely guy – and starts being really rebellious, downs his tools and starts refusing to do certain things. Richard Dunne would have nipped that sort of thing in the bud straight away. If Richard Dunne had stayed at the club for another four years, on the same wages, that’s an invaluable person to have around the place.

Robinho offered to have Ronaldo and Thiago Silva stay at his house for two weeks if City gave them a trial in 2008…Mark Hughes said no!

I knew that the club were going to go for Robinho, so it wasn’t a shock to me on Deadline Day. I don’t think Mark Hughes would have gone for him, personally; that was a statement signing from the owners, whereas I think Mark would have gone for someone different. But all of a sudden you’ve got the likes of him coming in, and you’re thinking ‘I need to be a part of this journey’. The idea of wanting to leave had gone out of the window.

I was looking forward to playing with him, because I wanted players of his calibre to come in and help me to raise my game. I felt a little bit jealous of him, actually. At that time I was flying. I felt like the main man at the club. I didn’t want someone coming in and taking that away from me, but that meant I had to ramp my game up a notch, and luckily that year I ended up winning Player of the Year and did really well for myself.

Robinho was such a great guy, a lovely, lovely guy. He just had this outrageous ability and when I looked at him, I could only imagine what he would have been like at 15 or 16, and how many players he must have embarrassed as a kid. Some of the things he could do were out of this world, but for some reason he couldn’t play away from home.

He was unbelievable at home, he was ridiculous in training, but he couldn’t perform in away games and none of us knew why. So we ended up having to put Craig Bellamy or Darius Vassell out there and have him sitting on the bench because, for some reason, he couldn’t play away from home. It was just the most bizarre thing.

I can remember when he came in, after a couple of days he told Mark Hughes to sign Ronaldo, who was a free agent at the time, and he also told him to sign Thiago Silva, because he was available for £2.5m. I think he was playing in Brazil at the time and would have been around 23. Mark Hughes said no, he said we had too many Brazilians in the team with Elano and Jo playing for us.

I remember when Robinho was talking about it, I was just walking around the training complex just saying to anyone who would listen, “imagine what it would be like if Ronaldo cames here? Imagine!”

He must have been up for it himself because otherwise I don’t think Robinho would have asked Mark. When Mark went back to him and said no, Robinho said “right, bring them both in on trial. Bring them in for two weeks, they can come and stay with me, just give them two weeks”. We’re talking about Ronaldo and Thiago Silva…and Mark Hughes said no again!

I just wanted to see Ronaldo in the flesh…and even Thiago Silva. Imagine if he’d signed for City? You’d have had him and Vincent Kompany at the back, could you imagine that?

Robinho was brilliant, a great, great guy. I’ve got nothing but positive memories of him.

Yaya Toure’s three words to me before I was pushed out of City…”do not leave!”

When Mark Hughes left and Roberto Mancini came in, I did start to feel a bit of imposter syndrome kicking in, to be honest with you. I felt like things were moving a bit too fast, the whole project was outgrowing me.

The wages and the names that were coming in, their CVs were picking the team. It didn’t matter what I did between Monday and Friday, it was completely irrelevant because by the time game day came around, those £30m players on £200-300,000 a week were going to play. I genuinely thought – and still think – that I was as good, if not better, than some of the guys that were coming in.

But I was never going to be given that fair chance under Mancini. Me and a few of the other lads just knew our days were numbered. My position was an important one, that number 10 or number 8 role, and Man City are always going to sign one of the top five central midfielders, strikers, full-backs in the world, because that’s their business model. It’s not to say I couldn’t have been one of those players, but when the manager is bringing in David Silva and Yaya Toure, you know your days are going to be numbered.

On reflection, there . are things I could and should have done differently, but on the pitch, there’s only so much you can do when your manager doesn’t want you in the starting line-up. I probably shouldn’t have signed for Aston Villa on a permanent deal. I should have gone there on loan and ridden it out at City, waiting for Mancini to leave.

I can remember during pre-season in New York, Yaya Toure came and spoke to me. I’d only been training with him for a couple of weeks, but he just said to me “do not leave.” He really didn’t want me to go, but in the end I was forced out. I had to train on my own and ended up leaving as part of a deal to bring James Milner in. I should have dug my heels in a bit more, but at the same time, when you know you’re not wanted somewhere, it’s very hard to respond that way. A lot of people would have sat back and smoked a cigar for a few years and relaxed, but that just wasn’t in my nature.

I believed every thing owners told us they were going to do with City

I played at Manchester City for a long time and worked with lots of different managers. They were all good in their own ways, but when Mark came in, it just felt different. He assembled a proper team. He was ahead of his time and he had a team of people for everything. We were doing urine tests before training, fingerprint tests, it was unbelievable.

We were getting pampered in every area. We were never exposed to this kind of stuff, the visual analysis, it was just incredible. The first couple of months working with Mark were amazing.

And when the new owners came in, it was unbelievable. From the very first day, you could just feel this massive shift in the club. It just felt different.

Playing for Man City at that time, just before the new owners came in, you knew you were playing for a bit of a selling club; the likes of myself, Michael Johnson, Micah Richards, we’d have had our eyes on Arsenal or a Spurs, clubs like that to pluck you away because we were a bottom-half team back then. We would do well to avoid relegation and we lived to beat Manchester United…that was us. We were the lads who were getting linked with moves because we were impressing in games, and we were young enough that, I suppose, people thought we could make that jump.

When these guys came in, it was something I immediately wanted to be a part of. I believed every single thing they said they were going to do with the club and I wanted to be a part of that journey.

It wasn’t just improvements on the pitch, it was everything behind the scenes, the training ground, the facilities, the new equipment in the gym; you could just see straight away that they were so serious about the project.

Then you’ve got the travel side of things. Every winter we were going to Abu Dhabi or we were in Tenerife for a mid-season break. Everything changed, for me especially, because I came over from Ireland when I was 15, and I worked my way all the way through to the first team. And in those days, it’s fair to say the club did things on the cheap. Everything was done on the cheap, but it was the norm. Then all of a sudden these guys come in, and it was as if we were Champions League players, the way we were treated.