Five years that's all we got.

[Rhapsody in Blue]

Hopefully we've learnt our lesson so that we this summer can ship away the old guard and bring in young, hungry, quality players. It's not only about strengthening certain areas, but to build a squad and instil a mentality in this group that will follow for years to come. Barca and Bayern haven't done too shabby without Pep and it's that legacy I want him to hand over when his days are over, even if FCB and BM started theirs way before. Let's next season be our 2011 and 2012 and kick off from there this time around!

 

[nellyonthewing]

This is the one!

It's not about individually blaming Mancini, or blaming Soriano, or Begiristain, or al Mubarak, or Pellegrini, or the players against each other. As a collective, from top to bottom, this club in many ways messed up what should have been a hugely successful period by each of those playing a part in holding us back either through random poor choices, consistent poor choices or all those facets not working as one whole unit (I won't say "holistic"!). Even though they have all heavily contributed to successes.

Instead we've seen a fairly successful period which has been great but should have been much better with Arsenal being Arsenal, Chelsea being yoyo and Ferguson coming to his end. We've not challenged for the title for three years running after spending £230m plus in those three years. That's not good!

I know FFPR was an issue and we were making huge losses at one point but in the past three years since that's not been an issue we've spent more than all but the Rags (who have done even worse might I add) and not once got near a title challenge, never mind near the title. I also think the club, from the top down, took their eye off the ball with the Manchester City Football Club FIRST TEAM and have spent too much time concentrating on New York, Melbourne, Yokohama, the CFA, the CFG, the Women's team, the youth teams (obviously not all bad things but have all contributed to our first team not being as good as it should have been), corporates, daytrippers, tourists, middle class families, money money money, "matchday experience" in non-traditional football culture ways, new stands, glass fucking tunnels... to the detriment of the FIRST TEAM and the traditional hardcore support of this club.

The first team has allowed to become unbalanced and disjointed in its quality and ages. We have no really good 'keepers, all four full backs are over 32, our centre halves have gone in-and-out like a brasshouse back door and have either been or become injury prone/erratic/inconsistent/overpriced/just not good enough, and we do not have anywhere near enough players in their prime years - the squad in 2012 had 14 of the 25 man squad who were in their prime years of 25-29, we now have 6! They were allowed to become unfit under the last manager and it seemed like they stopped playing for him at times.

This is poor! This is why we've not challenged for the title for three years running. It's not any individual's fault, it's Manchester City's fault from top to bottom.

These have, obviously, not been bad years being a City fan. They've been very good! But it's very frustrating as they could have been so much better and has been a missed opportunity! Leicester winning the league and Spurs being title challengers two years running show that.

I also don't like how we became Barcelona lite. I think we should have gone on and been Manchester City Football Club and done it all our own way.

Well summed up of why we are where we are. Just hope the next Chapter is about the launch of a decade of success.

 

[Pablo ZZZ Peroni]

And you're in loony toons land if you think the quality of our signings in 2012, the treatment of the manager and the disgraceful episode on FA Cup final day was all about FFP.

There are 3 parts to that statement and I'm only talking about one of them - our signings after winning the league in 2012. My post has zero to do with the treatment of Mancini or FA Cup Final day in 2013.

In your opening post in this thread you asserted we should have kicked on and made 3 world class signings after the title win in 2012. Later you came up with some waffle that FFP wasn't really an issue in 2012.

The irrefutable fact is the club were in a difficult place in the summer of 2012 with the imminent constraints of FFP and 3 mega signings were out of the question. (As PB implies we could have upped the anti for RVP but Ballotelli/Dzeko would have had to have gone)

November 2011
BIGGEST LOSS IN ENGLISH FOOTBALL HISTORY
• £197m loss eclipses Chelsea's £141m loss in 2005
• Results raise doubts about City's ability to meet new Uefa rules

Manchester City have announced the biggest loss in English football history, £197m for the most recent financial year. The loss on that huge scale, bankrolled by the club's oil-rich owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan during the third year since he bought City in 2008, eclipses the previous biggest loss ever made, £141m by Chelsea in 2005, the second year of their ownership by the oil oligarch Roman Abramovich.

City's loss was made principally by buying players to make Roberto Mancini's squad strong enough to top the Premier League, and paying wages of £174m, £21m higher than the club's entire turnover. During the 2010-11 financial year City signed Jérôme Boateng for £10.5m, Edin Dzeko for £27m, David Silva for £26m, Yaya Touré for £24m, Aleksandar Kolarov for £19m, Mario Balotelli for £24m and James Milner for £26m, an extraordinary series of player purchases totalling £156.5m.

Mansour made it clear when he took over that he would spend the fortunes necessary to make City successful, and since June 2010 he has personally poured a further £291m into the club. Added to the £500m Mansour invested up to May 31 2010, he has now spent an unprecedented £800m on the football club, to bankroll the expenditure on transfer fees and wages the club would otherwise not have been able to afford. All the money has gone in as equity, in new shares, making it permanent, not as loans. The net loss City made on their operations, £160.5m, was increased by £34.4m writing off the value of several players signed previously, including the Brazilian striker, Jô.

A loss on such record-breaking scale raises immediate concerns about whether City have any chance of complying with Uefa's "financial fair play" rules, which will apply to clubs in European competitions from the 2014-15 season. Uefa will analyse top clubs' accounts for the three years before that, starting with the current 2011-12 financial year, and the rules allow clubs to lose just €45m (£38.5m) in total over those three years. Uefa's rationale is that such subsidised overspending is relentlessly inflating players' wages throughout European football, which has driven clubs insolvent.

City acknowledged the looming enforcement of financial fair play when releasing their figures, restating that despite this record loss close, they will attempt to comply. Graham Wallace, the club's chief operating office, said the 2010-11 financial year, in which those signings of top players added to the mountainous wage bill already accumulated, will be City's worst.

"Our losses, which we predicted as part of our accelerated investment strategy, will not be repeated on this scale in the future," Wallace promised. "These financial results represent the bottoming out of financial losses at Manchester City before the club is able to move towards a more sustainable position in all aspects of its operations in the years ahead.

"As we undertake the club's commercial transformation, we are cognisant of the incoming Uefa financial fair play regulations and consequently we continue to maintain positive and ongoing dialogue with all appropriate football authorities."

The club's chairman, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, a senior adviser to Mansour's al-Nahyan ruling family and the Abu Dhabi government, also implicitly acknowledged City's need not to depend on such huge subsidy from Mansour in coming years:

"Now that we are witnessing progress, both on and off the pitch, it is more important than ever to work towards achieving our ambition to establish Manchester City as a more successful, sustainable and internationally competitive football club.

--------------------------

 

[blue dallas]

We finally won the league and then what happened.


2012/13 Mancini wanted de Rossi, Van Persie to press on but instead we got Garcia, Rodwell and Sinclair. The reason he didn’t get what he wanted is that the club had already decided to get rid of him. Fair enough, as while he seemed a perfect fit for City, Roberto has since done doodly squat which sort of suggests his limitations.


2013/14 So who to get to take us on into this brand new Txiki world. Pellegrini? Not a bad CV but not one of the elite managers. So why hire him? Well even at this stage he was keeping the seat warm for you know who and due to his style of play it was likely to eventually be a smooth transition. It worked. The players many of whom were still at their peak, unlike now, got that change of manager buzz and were in reality too good not too win the league, although it took some scouse wobbling this time to get us over the line. Throw in the LC, a pretty decent effort by players and the manager.


2014/15 Just like the previous post title season mysteriously we didn’t kick on. More poor purchases. Mangala and Fernando. What was Txiki thinking? Were these players Pellegrini wanted? They certainly weren’t Pep’s recommendations. And a pretty turgid season it was with embarrassing cup defeats.


2015/16 At last some intent in the transfer market. 3 years too late some might say. But Sterling and de Bruyne are class. Finally money is spent with the arrival of the messiah in sight. However the manager was beginning to run out of ideas and Pep’s shadow didn’t help resulting in our lowest league position since 2010/11.


2016/17 Some more mega signings and Pep to boot. But by this stage the total dereliction of duty by Txiki is beginning to become terminal. The 100 million plus spent on average CBs is coming home to roost as is the bewildering lack of attention to the ageing fullback situation. This all leaves the world’s best manager in a difficult position. Does he revert to a more Mancini like approach sure up the back and let the star forwards get on with it? Nah. He decides to play as if he still had Barca’s and Bayern’s fullbacks leading to the inevitable defensive cock ups.


From a position where we were league champions, and other clubs seemed to be in decline, we have somehow managed to win 1 title in 5 years.

Give you head a good fucking wobble

 

[greasedupdeafguy]

I don't really get how anyone can say we haven't underachieved. Spent more than any other side by far yet have failed to produce any sort of a title challenge in the past three seasons and done fuck all in the champions league like always. Transfer policy has been appalling, how we haven't upgraded our full back since the 2011-2012 season is beyond me as Kolarov has been the weak link and Clichy never re gained his form from the first title winning season. People will drone on about how we won nothing for 35 years and all that but the club weren't spending 150 million quid every window in that time. Time for the players to start producing something on a consistent basis as personally despite the weak links in the side I still think we have the best team.

 

[The Riot Club]

We have underachieved a bit, but for a variety of reasons. In my opinion it's down to a combination of the disastrous 2012 transfers, injuries, incompetent and possibly cheating officials, TV money getting the likes of Spurs and Liverpool closer to our spending, Chelsea being better in the transfer market, shit European draws, and genuine bad luck.

Having said that, we're not that far away from having the best team in the league, once we sort out the keeper, full backs and a world class defensive or box to box midfielder and we'll smash it next year.

I also think with 2 titles, an FA Cup and 2 league cups we've probably got a better haul since 2012 than anyone else.

I really think we should have added one more FA Cup and at least one more title to that though.

 

[FogBlueInSanFran]

I don't really get how anyone can say we haven't underachieved. Spent more than any other side by far yet have failed to produce any sort of a title challenge in the past three seasons and done fuck all in the champions league like always. Transfer policy has been appalling, how we haven't upgraded our full back since the 2011-2012 season is beyond me as Kolarov has been the weak link and Clichy never re gained his form from the first title winning season. People will drone on about how we won nothing for 35 years and all that but the club weren't spending 150 million quid every window in that time. Time for the players to start producing something on a consistent basis as personally despite the weak links in the side I still think we have the best team.

Fuck all in CL? We were in the semis last year. Did you predict that at season's beginning? Did anyone?

I agree about the FBs and think many are naive if they think this coming transfer window we'll get close to everything we need (the "It's Quiet" thread has become the tired residence of permanent hope addicts) -- the world has changed, tons of clubs have money, and it's an arms' race. Me, I'm grateful we're any good at all as I sit here wearing my 06-07 away top.

 

[greasedupdeafguy]

Fuck all in CL? We were in the semis last year. Did you predict that at season's beginning? Did anyone?

I agree about the FBs and think many are naive if they think this coming transfer window we'll get close to everything we need (the "It's Quiet" thread has become the tired residence of permanent hope addicts) -- the world has changed, tons of clubs have money, and it's an arms' race. Me, I'm grateful we're any good at all as I sit here wearing my 06-07 away top.

Relatively good run ( but I have never seen such an uninspired display for a semi final

 

[petrusha]

This is the one!

It's not about individually blaming Mancini, or blaming Soriano, or Begiristain, or al Mubarak, or Pellegrini, or the players against each other. As a collective, from top to bottom, this club in many ways messed up what should have been a hugely successful period by each of those playing a part in holding us back either through random poor choices, consistent poor choices or all those facets not working as one whole unit (I won't say "holistic"!). Even though they have all heavily contributed to successes.

Instead we've seen a fairly successful period which has been great but should have been much better with Arsenal being Arsenal, Chelsea being yoyo and Ferguson coming to his end. We've not challenged for the title for three years running after spending £230m plus in those three years. That's not good!

I know FFPR was an issue and we were making huge losses at one point but in the past three years since that's not been an issue we've spent more than all but the Rags (who have done even worse might I add) and not once got near a title challenge, never mind near the title. I also think the club, from the top down, took their eye off the ball with the Manchester City Football Club FIRST TEAM and have spent too much time concentrating on New York, Melbourne, Yokohama, the CFA, the CFG, the Women's team, the youth teams (obviously not all bad things but have all contributed to our first team not being as good as it should have been), corporates, daytrippers, tourists, middle class families, money money money, "matchday experience" in non-traditional football culture ways, new stands, glass fucking tunnels... to the detriment of the FIRST TEAM and the traditional hardcore support of this club.

The first team has allowed to become unbalanced and disjointed in its quality and ages. We have no really good 'keepers, all four full backs are over 32, our centre halves have gone in-and-out like a brasshouse back door and have either been or become injury prone/erratic/inconsistent/overpriced/just not good enough, and we do not have anywhere near enough players in their prime years - the squad in 2012 had 14 of the 25 man squad who were in their prime years of 25-29, we now have 6! They were allowed to become unfit under the last manager and it seemed like they stopped playing for him at times.

This is poor! This is why we've not challenged for the title for three years running. It's not any individual's fault, it's Manchester City's fault from top to bottom.

These have, obviously, not been bad years being a City fan. They've been very good! But it's very frustrating as they could have been so much better and has been a missed opportunity! Leicester winning the league and Spurs being title challengers two years running show that.

I also don't like how we became Barcelona lite. I think we should have gone on and been Manchester City Football Club and done it all our own way.

This post out of everything in the thread, is probably the closest to the way I feel. For me, the summer of 2012 - with its frustratingly mediocre recruitment - WAS largely down to FFP. If we remember, the 2012/3 season was the second year of the initial two-year reporting period and we were obviously going to miss complying by a mile. But the club thought that we could avoid sanction by applying a right to deduct the cost of player contracts entered into before summer 2010. We eventually couldn't, because UEFA later retrospectively adjusted the guidelines - go back and Read Prestwich Blue's authoritative posts on this at the time - but at the time, this was the club's objective.

That was mandated from Abu Dhabi. As we know from other things (for instance, their reluctance to be overty aggressive in response to some of the outrageous media coverage we've attracted), they're very keen to be seen to do things the right way. So avoiding sanction for FFP was a huge thing for them and this was made abundantly clear to the people back in Manchester. We didn't pay an extra GBP 6 million in the Hazard deal and extra money for RVP when United made him an incredible financial offer because we thought we'd miss our FFP target even after deducting costs under the pre-2010 player contracts. Now, people can say that our stakeholders are too nicey nicey and we should have stuck two fingers up at UEFA, just spending what we wanted. But that's another debate. The transfer activity was dictated by Abu Dhabi.

So while most Blues seem to have focused on 2012 as a missed opportunity, I see us as having been frustratingly held back by external factors that and regard the view of our stakeholders took was understandable. I like your post because it focuses on the last three years, and that's where I have more questions, too. In 2013/4, we won the league and a domestic cup, scoring more goals in competitive games than any other side in a season in the history of the English game. We had the best squad in the country, albeit with a core of key payers starting to get a bit long in the tooth. And, in the summer of 2014, we took our "pinch" for FFP, but we'd already transformed our finances to mean FFP wasn't a factor any longer and we could spend heavily going forward.

Now, the last three years have given us successes and plenty to enjoy. But I do agree that, if you'd shown us in August 2014 how the next 3 seasons would pan out, most people on here would have said we should be able to do just a little bit better. Now, we can say a couple of things in response to that. First is that our view of this season could differ radically depending on how we finish it; claim third convincingly plus win the Cup and we'll all be fairly bright, whereas missing fourth and losing the semi will see us pretty down. And second, it's been a slightly weird time because Manuel always had the feel of a stop-gap and we were clearly waiting for Pep to come in to take us to the next level.

Like you, I find it slightly bewildering that we presented Pep with the squad we did - knowing the way he plays, for instance, how on earth could we give him these four full-backs? But now he's had a year to embed his methods with the current players. He's no doubt learned much about a football culture that's very different from the one he grew up with. He can identify the areas where we need reinforcements and ensure we strengthen appropriately. And all that means next season is one in which we ought to be able to have a proper title tilt. It's a season that'll tell us whether we're in stasis or back to being contenders. I'm optimistic, but we've made it harder than it needed to be.

 

[CelesteItis]

Conveniently overlooking the corrupt Uefa FFP, the FArce, the cartel club, the rag media and bent refs efforts to stop City during at least last 4 years, to come up with this steamy pile of dogshite narrative. Do you work for any of the s*n, fail, torygraph, Graun or muEN?