Discuss Pellegrini (Pt 3)

[George Hannah]

Do we think Pellegrini is content with his own decisions which have led to four away defeats, humiliation at home by Munich, an undeserved draw at Stoke and a lucky win against Hull? Does he even care?

 

[supercity88]

Re: Clueless manager

Normally I would question such a moronic assessment of our manager. But I feel for the OP. Another away defeat and considering just what a win would have meant it hurts even more. I agree that the players have to be judged now. 4 years in a row, 4 1-0 defeats. We fielded a side that had scored 12 in 2 games and through injury swapped a few players. Defensively again a long ball troubled us. It shouldnt have. Changes or no changes the team that were out there should have won. We dominated but couldn't score and credit to Sunderland. But we should not have conceded. So hard to stay reasonable when it keeps happening over and over. But I really think that the squad needs work, it is clear that a lot of these players are lacking desire and or quality. If I was sat on the bench I would be giving 100% to earn a start. These players are coming in and being lethargic. Mancini tried to beat them into giving effort, Pellegrini tries to nurture and support. Neither had worked. I do believe that luck will come our way, we have not deserved to lose some of these away games, lady luck has to change at some point. But points are crucial this season whether we deserve them or not. If we had have taken a point from Villa, Chelsea and Sunderland we would be 3 pts off the top. We need to make ourselves harder to beat.

 

[Anonymous]

Re: Clueless manager

Tell me anything I said that is wrong.

Agree, we have another clown in charge with a fancy foreign name.

Clowns don't get 96pts in La Liga. Clowns don't take small teams on shoe string budgets to the Champions League (Villareal, Malaga). Whilst not cementing his ability with a trophy in Spain, it is clear he has ability and is far from a clown.

Why did he play Garcia? He is useless, why not Rodwell?

Rodwell is still carrying an injury and is not 100% yet.

Sunderland had one forward yet he changed like for like taking off Negredo for Dzecko and Richards for Zaba? Should have taken a defender off and kept Negredo on.

Negredo for Dzeko may have been to give Sunderland something different to consider as although tall, they have different styles of play. General consensus on Richards was that he had a poor game, so surely it was right for him to come off?

Navas was great first 5 mins, then started going inside? Where is the coaching for the bleeding obvious?

That's generally what Navas does when he plays.

Peligrini also totally ballsed up against Bayern. They had 5 in midfield, and probably the best midfield in Europe, so he plays 4 in midfield and had Dzecko upfront who can't trap a bag of cement so nothing sticks.We got battered but wouldn't have if he would have used basic football common sense!

We could have parked the bus, put 10 across the 6 yard box and I'm not sure that night it would have made a blind bit of difference as Bayern were exceptional.

Mancini wasn't any better, he made some ridiculous decisions and we got very lucky winning the league and the cup if we are honest.

Some times you need some luck. However, spanking the shite at the swamp 6-1, Spurs 5-1 at White Hart Lane, etc were far from lucky occurrences.

We need to find a manager who has common sense and knows the Premier League inside out. It's not rocket science.

Someone like Sam Allardyce? Steve Bruce? Ian Holloway? David Moyes? Chris Hughton? Alan Pardew? Martin Jol? Martin O'Neill?

Finally who is that miserable looking git who sits next to Pelligrini? How the hell would he inspire anybody. Is is jobs for his mates yet again? How much do these clowns earn? Money for old rope.

Ruben Cousillas. Unfortunately, I don't know too much about him, least of all how much he earns.

 

[Danielmanc]

We've had stunning victories vs the shite, Newcastle and Norwich plus made progress in Europe (lesson from Bayern aside) so you can see Pellegrini definitely has something about him. I agree he should be getting more from the squad - particularly away from home in the league. As has been said to death already, he needs to pick a settled back four and ease up on the rotation. Yes there are times key players need a rest, but the continual wholesale chopping and changing needs a review - it's that kind of large scale tinkering that did not help Ranieri's or Benitez's teams at times; the more settled they were seemed to be when they were at their most successful.

When I see Pellegrini, I cannot find anything from him that I can nail my colours to in the same way I could Mancini. I don't see him in training so don't know if he is like that with the players and more importantly, I'm not a player so don't even know if that is important to a player. The point I am making here is that if the only thing I have to worry about is a cult of personality from our manager, I would suggest things aren't anything like as apocalyptic as suggested in some posts.

Stunning victories against Newcastle and Norwich are not a true indication of where we are this stage of the season. Away results are unfortunately.

And getting out of a group which includes Plznen and Moscow is not significant progress and most City fans I speak to believe we would have qualified with Mancini as manager from that group.

You are right Gio - these victories kind of mask a problem. We know full well that we have no problem demolishing any team that come to The Etihad and bend over for us. When, however, we go away from home and come up against any team with balls we fail to do the business. All the talk of 'we deserved to win' counts for nothing - the opposition got the points and we didn't.

I enjoyed the Norwich match and cheered each and every goal we scored but will still rather beat 7 teams 1-0 than one team 7-0 !

I really hope that Pelle can turn our away from round and by New Years Day we will know the answer to all f the questions being asked, that's for sure.

 

[AliWaheed]

The point I am making here is that if the only thing I have to worry about is a cult of personality from our manager, I would suggest things aren't anything like as apocalyptic as suggested in some posts.

But it isn't the only thing is it. The next seven games will tell us a lot.

Spurs, Swansea, Arsenal and Liverpool at home.
WBA, Southampton and Fulham away.

Some tough looking fixtures. At the moment it is difficult to say what is going to happen. 14 points and we will probably treading water. 18 we will be back in it. Anything less and the Barca boys will be getting ready to pull the plug. Not being top four is not an option.

Absolutely! Thats the thing to be afraid of. We bought ourselves some time by winning the league (which was quite jammy to be fair). Fact is, that defence HAS to be sorted out pronto.
The second thing is that the passing is WAY too slow. Theres a total lack of urgency about people like Toure sometimes. Aguero spends too much time coming back or out wide to pick up the ball. At one point you had Aguero, Richards and Jesus on the right with Richards just standing around like a spare pr1ck. Whenever there's a cross, theres nobody in the pen area to be on the end of it. Even Dzzzzzeko was out wide at one point and there was no one in the box.
Fair enough, it was a post champions league game, but guys come on! at least TRY and make an effort. Didnt like the way Pelle said he didnt know what the prob was...... I know: They move the ball TOO SLOW. The defenders have time to get back into position.

 

[prestonibbo_mcfc]

Do we think Pellegrini is content with his own decisions which have led to four away defeats, humiliation at home by Munich, an undeserved draw at Stoke and a lucky win against Hull? Does he even care?

A win is a win lucky or not. Ask Sunderland. I don't think he will be happy, same as he won't be going overboard
about the smashing of the rags and scoring 7 last week. Just had to mention those to balance your blinkered view a tad.

 

[Anonymous]

Does he even care?

He certainly cares more than one or two on this thread who seem more interested in City losing so they can say "I told you so" about the manager.

 

[adrianr]

What do you want Pellegrini to say after a defeat? I've seen criticism on here because of his demeanour on the bench when he's watching the game. This is pretty low stuff, and not what I would expect from City fans

You listen to Wenger, Moyes or any top manager after a defeat. Do they make much sense? Mourinho has plenty of excuses and rants but they are even worse than silence.

The only place to sort it out is on the pitch and and training ground, and the only place for words and explanation is the dressing room when the manager has had time to reflect and digest events. Fans want rational explanations for defeat, but maybe these things are just not possible in the immediate aftermath of a defeat.

I want to give Pellegrini a chance but I can not understand how we can have dominated every game (with exception of Stoke) in terms of possession and shots and come away with so few points. The results reflect some bad luck, or defending and poor attacking play. They are also in pat anomalous.

If we were to pay WBA tomorrow away (our next away game), would you expect to win, lose or draw?

Low perhaps, but unsurprising. Fans are passionate people. To see a manager lose so many games without such as a blink of emotion across his face is infuriating. Christ even Wenger takes it out on water bottles occasionally. Looking not only like you don't give a shit, but that you simply don't understand why we're loosing is infuriating.

This was a frequent occurrence under Mancini, but as many of us were repeatedly reminded last season, possession doesn't win prizes, points do. I expected a period of transition from slow methodical defensive side to a quicker more aggressive pressing side. However the main thing about any top team in transition, is they must always continue to be a top team (As AVB found out at Chelsea). You have to stay in and around the top 3/4, perhaps not convert everything to wins, but at the very least don't convert draws (or in our case wins) into losses. Maybe we're doing too much too fast, regardless, it falls on the manager to pace the change. He's, IMO, got that pace drastically wrong. As evidenced by our repeated defensive failings. Does anyone think Sunderland, or Villa, or Cardiffs back lines are better than ours? If loosing Vinny is such a problem, sit the team deeper, throw on another midfielder, just do *something* to ensure we stop conceding goals. Stop charging off chanting 'We'll score more than you', whilst we get sucker punched by long ball over the top after long ball over the top.

Against WBA, I'd expect us to win, because we are, or at least should be the better team. We beat them last season with ten men for a huge portion of the match, even came from behind. However I expected us to beat everyone we've lost to this season with the exception of Chelsea. Will we? Well, christ only knows. Realistically we need 6 points from WBA and Southampton, 4 wouldn't be good enough. Getting 3 points at Southampton will be very difficult. Do it and it may just have the team thinking we can get 3 points at our other tough away grounds.

10 points from the next 12 would be good enough and would put us back in the top 4 and very likely in touch with Arsenal.

August, Sep and October has gone. Commit it to memory. learn from it. Use it to avoid complacency, and lets get to the New Year within 3 points of the top. If we do that, then every City fan will be rightly confident of winning back the title from Man Utd

It's annoying to have thrown points away, but lets use the experience positively. I refuse to accept that City can't make 3 points on Arsenal and Man Utd between now and New Year, and another 3 points on them between then and May. It's a very limited and achievable target

That in itself doesn't look insurmountable by any stretch, I agree. And perhaps I'm getting hung up on the losses, rather than the points. However, I think it's telling that no team with 4 losses at this stage of the season has gone on to win the league. It's just too many hits to take all at once. There are too many frailties that don't look like they're being properly addressed. It would take a turnaround of post-Arsenal proportions to claw this back now. How the bookies still have us favourites I genuinely have no idea. With that Kolarov free kick right at the end, by hook or by crook, we should have got that ball in the back of the net. That's firmly what I believe champions would have done. We didn't even test the keeper.

We can have faith in the fact that our performances haven't been poor. We haven't deserved, depending on your definition of such, to come away with so few points from our away games. It would be a bigger worry if we weren't getting points and playing shit. However lowest points total since the takeover tells it's own story. If that Hughes trajectory spiel is to be believed, Pellegrini is surely soon going to be out on his arse. Because we're heading for outside the top 4 at the moment at best.

 

[Gaylord du Bois]

Does he even care?

He certainly cares more than one or two on this thread who seem more interested in City losing so they can say "I told you so" about the manager.

I bet that feels good to post Billy.

 

[George Hannah]

Does he even care?

He certainly cares more than one or two on this thread who seem more interested in City losing so they can say "I told you so" about the manager.

Perhaps their initial enthusiasm has just proved misplaced, Pellegrini just smiles his way through post match defeat interviews telling us all how mystifying it is that his superior side failed to win. He knows he's safe in his job no matter what.