johnny crossan said:
I find your notion that Mancini has to improve
a) on his European performances and b) on his man-management skills
a rather bizarre conflation.
It prompts me to ask, other than quoting his bad press and ignoring his good press, how you know so much about Mancini's management style.
Again, that point of the post is not to bash Mancini but to highlight that man management criticisms are not exactly something new for Mancini. It isn't something made up by City fans and some mard arse players as the pro Mancini camp likes to have it painted as. As I mentioned previously, it is a management style and does have it's merits as well as it's drawbacks like anything in life.
While is creates competition for spots in the team, it also upsets players and as a manager it becomes your job to manage those players and their expectations. Mancini has an assistant manager, first team coaches and trainers out the wazoo, so to me his primary responsibility is ensuring that he has a healthy competitive squad with all players pulling in the same direction. If all these players appear to have different expecations than the manager, then there is an obvious communication problem there.
These man management issues are what many believe to be the reason he struggled in European competitions as he played his favorites over players who were more accomplished. That's bad man management in my opinion. You field your best team always, regardless of how you feel about individual players or whether they support you or not. That's how the 2 ideas become related.