First and foremost, in answer to the OP's question, there will be no evasive action. We've made our announcement, Guardiola is here next season, Pellegrini is in charge until then. We won't be replacing him before the season ends.
Our form has been pretty poor for a fair while, we're lucky that we started the season so well because, without those early wins, we'd be really struggling currently.
We won 7 of our first 9 league games, losing the other 2. Since then we've only won another 7 league games, drawing 5 and losing 4. So, that's 21 points from our first 9 games, and 26 points from the following 16 games, 2.33 points per game compared with 1.625 points per game. There's been a clear drop off. In fact, since beating Bournemouth in our 9th league game of the season we haven't managed back to back league victories. That's almost 4 months without back to back league wins. That's a truly damning statistic, and clearly points to a worrying lack of consistency from City.
Pellegrini is a professional football manager, his coaches are professional football coaches, they are clearly working on the defensive side of the game with City's squad, to suggest otherwise is simply idiotic. The issue lies in, specifically, what they are instructing the defenders to do. Whatever plans they have to deal with defensive situations they are clearly not working. Everyone involved in football will have their own style, their own ideas on how a defence should be drilled, how they should be structured. Pellegrini seems to prefer allowing individuals to take responsibility for their own actions, we are far less regimented defensively under him, with less cover, and certainly a less cohesive shape when we don't have the ball. I don't personally like it, but there's no reason, with the right personnel, it couldn't be effective. The issue we have is the we've not got the right personnel, both due to the recruitment of our defenders, and due to the injury issues we've had this season.
Pellegrini can't be blamed entirely for the recruitment, one suspects Begiristain probably has a bigger say in individual purchases/targets than Pellegrini does (that will likely change when Guardiola arrives) and many of our defenders have been inherited from Mancini's time at the club, and before that too. Clichy, Zabaleta, Kolarov and Kompany all predate Pellegrini, whilst Sagna and Demichelis were clearly FFP restriction driven signings, and Mangala and Otamendi both arrived with good reputations. Where I do blame Pellegrini is in his insistence on trying to fit square pegs into round holes. Our defensive players are not really suited to the tactics Pellegrini wants to employ, this means he has 2 options, replace the players, or replace the tactics, the third option of "just stick with the tactics and muddle through" shouldn't have even been in the equation, yet alone where we ended up. A distinct lack of tactical tweaking, to deal with specific sides, or specific players, both before, and during, games is also a constant frustration with Pellegrini. At times it seems as if he has his way of doing things and that's what we'll do, and if it isn't working then we'll just keep doing it and see what happens.
I suspect this season will pan out as follows:-
1 - We'll win the Capital One Cup, Liverpool aren't anything special and you'd hope our big players turn up for the cup final 9lthough Wigan proved this isn't always the case)
2 - We'll lose to Chelsea in the FA Cup, although this will likely be down to the FA's fucking ridiculous scheduling of the fixture and our squad choices off the back of this.
3 - We'll finish in 2nd place in the league, behind Arsenal in all likelihood. Spurs and Leicester have never had to deal wit the pressure of a title tilt, we have. I think both will start to drop some points, and we'll find a way of clawing our way past them both. Arsenal however have enough quality to get the results we seem incapable of getting.
4 - We'll have too much for Kiev in Europe, and then it's all down to the luck of the draw. If we get the Gent/Wolfsburg, Benfica/Zenit or possibly PSV/Atletico Madrid winners then we'd have a shot at making the semi final. If we get Real, PSG, Barca or Bayern then we'll go out.
