Roberto Mancini - next Italy manager

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Mancini in his Zenit bobble hat, scarf and gloves combination during last night's game, when it was minus 5 in Moscow. He doesn't need such items for home matches because the roof is closed and the temperature is at least 18C in the stadium even when it's freezing outside. (Seeing their new stadium with the roof makes me regret that we can't build a state of the art new one of our own and give the Etihad over for rugby, but that's a pipe dream - and a digression for this thread).

Anyway, Zenit last night seem to have played pretty well as far as I can gather and Mancini himself asserted quite forcefully that the defeat was undeserved. However, you always have problems if you give the opposition a two-goal start and it's not as if dropping points is an isolated event of late. Not only are they now six points off the pace, but they have three powerful teams, who trailed Zenit by a distance not long ago, coming up behind them: CSKA are one point back in third, Spartak are a further point back in fourth and Krasnodar are one more point adrift in fifth. The brilliant start seems a long time ago and the last eleven league games have brought three wins, five draws and three defeats, which can only be seen as a very disappointing haul given the playing resources at Zenit's disposal.

Russian football Twitter - or at least the parts of it that I follow - don't suggest that the knives are out for Roberto yet. However, they really need to win at home next week to mid-table Ural Ekaterinburg in the last league game before the winter break. Nor would it do Mancini any harm if he could get the draw his team needs in San Sebastian in the final Europa League group game if they're to top the section ahead of Real Sociedad.

Then they can regroup. There's quite a bit of speculation over what they may do in the transfer market this winter: Mancini was presumably unfamiliar with many of the players he took over, but will now have seen which ones don't fit into his plans. If they can be moved on, it may give him the wherewithal to make an addition or two, including perhaps by bringing back players who were loaned out in the summer but who now look better bets that some of those kept on. He has a challenge on his hands, though.
Mind your head in that dugout bobby
 
Coupled with a win for Lokomotiv means that the gap is 8 points with ten games left. L
 
He almost went to Celtic!

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/sp...zenit-roberto-mancini-celtic-brendan-rodgers/

ROBERTO MANCINI will take his Zenit St Petersburg side to Parkhead in February – nearly a year after opening the door on managing Celtic...He said: “The Scottish fans are the best in the world, I love them.

“In one way it would be nice to see Celtic and Rangers in the Premier League, but I don’t think it will ever happen because it would also be the end of Scottish football.

“I want to add one thing. If Celtic were to build a team strong enough to regularly compete in the Champions League, I might decide to manage them one day.
 


Zenit's winter schedule. They're going on two training camps. In Dubai, they have friendlies on 22 January against Copenhagen, on 25 January against Slavia Prague and on 28 January against Guanzhou Evergrande. Then they go to Turkey, where they play Slovan Bratislava on 4 February, Red Star Belgrade on 7 February and Maribor on 10 February, five days before the away Europa League tie against Celtic.

They've also made their first signing of the winter, bringing in Tosno striker Anton Zabolotny. He started at CSKA but didn't really make it there and had a bit of a journeyman career in the lower leagues until his goals helped Tosno to promotion last season. He's impressed in the top flight this season and has made three appearances for the national side this season.

Finally, nothing to do with Zenit but a tweet showing you one of the oddities of football life in this crazy old country:

 
so it's going to be roasting at the World Cup this summer then, and people were worried about Qatar...

That kind of weather is the exception rather than the rule during summer in Moscow and even rarer in St Petersburg. I suppose it's more likely in some of the southern host cities, such as Sochi.
 

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