He may well have spoken to people at the club but they've given him a version of events that, shall we say, bends the truth. I believe the plan was to sack Mancini in 2012 and get Pep in then. At the time it didn't look like we'd catch the rags and they knew there was going to be trouble between Mancini, Soriano & Begiristain. With the situation being that he only had one year left on his contract, everything was falling into place nicely until those twats from Trafford fucked up and dropped 8 points. Having won the league, they could hardly sack Mancini as it would have been a PR disaster far outweighing the Hughes sacking.
So they had to backtrack, offer Mancini a new contract and leave Pep high and dry. He took a sabbatical, learnt English and took the Bayern job on the understanding he'd come to us after his 3 years was up. Meanwhile, back in Manchester, everything goes as predicted with Mancini, we have to sack him snd go out to get Pellegrini to tide us over.