Football FanCast columnist and City fan David Mooney is sad to see Sven go and wonders if Mark Hughes is the right man to take the club forward.

I've made my feelings clear in the past about Man City's choice to sack Sven. I have never been in favour of it and I think it's one of the most stupid things the club can do, and now it's happened.

Many will say that it was always inevitable that Sven was going to be leaving after all the rumblings that came out in the back end of last season. The Swede failed to get any support from his Chairman as results started to turn and when reports first started to emerge that Sven may be axed by Shinawatra, Thaksin did little but add fuel the rumours, by failing to come out and deny them.

I know the dreaded ‘vote of confidence' was something we didn't want, but in this case Thaksin's silence said more than his original comments, and it appears that he's sacked Sven based purely on results and the second half of last season.

But, let's look at this objectively. In the second half of this current season, while the performances weren't top notch - aside from a few games, like Newcastle, Man Utd, Portsmouth, Tottenham - the team still picked up 19 points. The season before the team picked up 16 in the second half of the season, but the performances were consistently bad.

This season, we had a superb first half to build on. Every club has a turn in form at some point in the season, and it's no coincidence that ours came when players were injured (Johnson, Richards, Onouha, Castillo). My reasoning for this is that Sven was still building a team, so he was finding out where his weak areas were (as these are often more evident towards the end of a long season) and, given the summer and some money, I think we would have seen a better Manchester City next season - But now we will have a season of transition, where a new manager will come in, who will want his own players and own squad and subsequently face a season not so dissimilar to last.

Talk, as I write this, is of Mark Hughes for manager. I think he's done a good job at Blackburn and possibly taken them as far as he can, and it seems a lot of City fans are happy to have him. He should, in theory, do a good job at City. He always gets the best out of his player, but the one thing I do worry about is his player pull. He's not a name like Sven was, but if he can build a successful team, then I don't suppose anyone will care about that.

We need to move on. Sven is gone, someone - possibly Hughes - is coming in and we need to give them our full support. Thaksin needs to realise that Rome wasn't built in a day. We don't want a situation where Hughes is getting sacked for not finishing in the top four or winning a cup.

He needs time and Thaksin needs to understand this.

Bring on next season!

Whoever said there is no such thing as the beautiful game?