moomba said:
I'm not a fan of some of the things the club is doing but I can't imagine that Soriano would be under any pressure at all.
No pressure at all. By every single metric he isn't just doing ok, he is a huge success as an executive at City. He could be an unbelievable success and win the CL but that apart, every area of the club has had major success and growth in his time as CEO. There is no way in the world he is under even the slightest bit of pressure from anyone outside of a few posters on Bluemoon.
Things might look bad with the playing squad at the moment, but I think you need to look longer term with a DoF. Signings haven't set the world on fire, but it can take a bit of time for players to come to terms with things in a new club and country. You also need to look at signings made at youth level (presume Txiki has a hand in this),we might not see the benefits of his work for a few years yet.
I wonder sometimes if people don't "get" what Directors of Football do. They are a consequence of the incredibly short termism involved in managerial appointments and lifespans. Their job is not to go out and blow five hundred million quid every time we draw a game, their job is to continuously improve the squad piece by piece within the confines of their budget and their Academy prospects. This is exactly what Txiki is doing - every single signing he has made has improved the squad as a whole so the next manager and the one after that will have a team of sufficient quality for them to succeed with.
Managers build teams, DoFs build squads.
I do have some concerns that all of the senior people at the club are spreading themselves a bit thin looking after three/four clubs across the world. But I don't really know what sort of support has been put in place to manage that.
They tend to have their own CEOs/support staff locally. No different from any corporation have semi-autonomous business units inside of them really.
In short, I think a lot of the criticism the two are getting is over the top, and a bit reactionary given a pretty down season so far.
They sacked Mancini and came in using marketing-speak. Thus they made themselves a target to people who know almost nothing about what their job entails or how good or badly they are performing. It's the old passing-the-blame trick, you never want it to land on people you like so you keep going through the list of suspects until you find someone who have no feelings for one way or another and blame then. And of course someone is always to blame for every loss or draw, apparently even our executive team.
Nobody blames the Sheikh because he's universally loved. Same with Khaldoon. One saved the club, the other has a wonderful image in the community thanks to his calm and positive interviews. So this really leaves four groups - the players, the manager, the board or the flavour of the month.
We don't have a flavour of the month like Chappy or our medical team to blame at the moment so they are out of the window. People see Kompany have a bad game and follow their bad logic; can't blame Vincent Kompany for his performances as it must be the manager's fault. But then the manager who is now obviously useless was appointed by the board so it's the board's fault. But the board was appointed by the Chairman and Owner, and we can't blame then for anything so the board is the highest level of blame.
If Henderson would have hit the bar or Aguero would have nicked it inside the post nobody would be having this conversation. Apparently the executive team are only to blame when we drop points, any other time they are fine. The difference between "we're the best ever" and "sack the board" is the width of a post which is why I rarely contribute here any more as I don't feel they are anything but people pouring their impotent rage onto anything and everybody they can get away with. Considered opinions thought out have disappeared from here over the last couple of years and the answer to every problem, no matter how big or small, is to sack everybody and spend lots of money. I do wonder if we had garnered our success over 10 years of working hard at executive level rather than a huge outlay in the transfer market whether this would be different. The idea of working with players is not something ever considered by our fanbase, the idea of good and bad form for a player is gone entirely or at least bad form now equals "needs to be dropped and sold". Concepts like time to bed in are barely memorable, Bony has 10 pages of criticism and he hasn't even started a game. Either they are great or they are to be sold and we're going to spunk a bunch of money on somebody else like we're bored kids in a toy shop and footballers are the latest collectable for us.
WE WILL NEVER SPEND WHAT WE DID PREVIOUSLY EVER AGAIN.
People really, really, really need to understand this. Every single time that spending is mentioned by anybody connected to the club it is always referred to as "a period of accelerated, exceptional spending which will not be repeated". It was a one off to push us into the CL and title contention, from then on we ran a proper business and generally spend around £80m a year net give or take.
City will improve and they'll do it extremely simply. They will do it by having a philosophy of play which they adhere to when and wherever possible, and they will improve the squad inch by inch in a concerted and patient approach to putting together a squad and a club that can be in contention for the CL regularly. They will do this whether or not we lose to Liverpool or draw to Stoke. Their plans are bigger than the minutia of good and bad form and they won't be derailed by them outside of a huge fall from grace that challenges our top four place which only the morons think is possible. Coming second to Chelsea is not a disaster and Pellegrini is a coach that they both trust and admire, who shares their philosophy of how to do things.
Thank God some of this lot aren't in charge of City as the flapping over every dropped point is utterly ridiculous.
