Mark Hughes was fired tonight as manager of Manchester City by Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi, who, as far as we know, has no track record as a football fan. He's advised by his chief executive Gary Cook, who's a former Nike executive. Cut from the same cloth then as Peter Kenyon, formerly of Manchester United and then Chelsea, and Mike Ashley, the disastrous owner of Newcastle. Which forces the question: are these foreign owners, and their trainer salesmen executives, any good for the game? Well at least Sheikh Mansour has dipped his hand in his pocket, to the tune of about £200m, just as the luckiest accountant in Siberia Roman Abramovitch at Chelsea did. This is in stark contrast to the Glazer clan at Manchester United and Tom Hicks and George Gillett at Liverpool who have cynically exploited the club brands to create (what they thought was) a nice earnings opportunity. Stan Kroenke at Arsenal doesn't look any different. Hughes has rather screwed up at Man City, launching a ridiculously public campaign to sign John Terry from Chelsea and, when that failed, hiring two over-priced centre halves in Toure and Lescott who are the absolute antithesis of Terry, footballers rather than gung-ho bruisers. What you need is one of each of course. And when City lost 0-3 To Spurs a few days ago that was the writing on the wall for Hughes, who's being replaced by former Inter Milan manager Roberto Mancini. But the English game would be much better off if Sheikh Mansour, and Roman Abramovitch and the Glazers and Hicks and Gillett, all cleared off home and left us in peace. A few blessed Premiership footballers might be a bit poorer but the game would be an awful lot healthier.