Mancini was at Inter for four years, and played shit (but successful) football in his first season because he didn't have the players he wanted.
People who are saying that the tactics aren't working are completely wrong, and any sensible fan will see that the tactics ARE working. The Zona Mista is designed to keep goals out and dominate the possession to the point whereby the only danger to the defence are longballs from their fullbacks to their wingers. This is doing exactly what we wanted.
The problem as many see it, is that the slow tempo/possession football isn't entertaining. I'm pretty annoyed at some of the members on here who are saying that we have gone backwards. I implore all of you to go back 50 pages on the forum, and check the threads for when Hughes was in charge. No organisation, long ball, boring football, shit defence, were all sticks used to beat Hughes with. I'd rather win every game 1-0 than lose 5-4.
If you look back over the past 6 weeks, Man United have accrued the most points. City are second. Whilst it may not be the most entertaining brand of football, it is certainly working, and we are winning many points. I must say, I can't think of a time where I've been more confident of City keeping a clean sheet. We aren't exactly a brick wall yet, but we are definitely getting there.
Unfortunately, the best attack in the business doesn't win you success. There are many examples of this over the years, Brazil's quadruple of Ronaldinho/Robinho/Ronaldo/Adriano being a good one.
The most successful teams in the world are built off of a good defence, and keeping clean sheets. This is something that Mancini is obviously heavily working on, if NMT's training reports are anything to go by. Mancini has figured out that a high percentage of goals conceeded in England are down to set pieces and bad defensive organisation.
Speaking of training reports, I am a little concerned with how inept we look on offensive set pieces considering on how often we work upon them (every day pretty much). Maybe with a natural corner taker like Johnson we'll be ok, yet at the moment with Barry/Petrov/Ireland taking corners, we rarely win anything from them. Free kicks are a different ball game all together, and our defence may as well save itself the 40 yard sprint, as if we are within 50 yards of goal, we tend to shoot.
Mancini's style of play is getting there, but still not achieved (as is to be expected). His top priority was the defence, and if look at the monumental change between us now and when Hughes was here, you can see why he is good for his money.
I don't understand the argument that the players don't possess the required quality. I'd put up a case for every single one of our players against any player at Liverpool or Arsenal or United. Maybe not against Chelsea, but we aren't aiming at their level currently. We are a better squad than United, who are successful because they have a more consistent management structure than us. They soon won't. Arsenal and Liverpool would KILL for our squad. There are reasons why they are sniffing around our 'fringe' players like M. Johnson, Nedum (Scouse) and Petrov (Arse asked about him).
In Tevez, Adebayor, Bellamy and RSC, we have the strikers to play any type of football we want, at a top level too. Tevez seems to be a hero at the moment, as does Bellamy, so I don't need to tell you how good those guys are. RSC is hugely underrated by City fans, go and ask a Blackburn or Munich fan what they think of him and all will tell you that he is a brilliant player. Once he gets his run, he'll change some opinions on here, and we hopefully start valuing him more. He actually did pretty well when he came on yesterday. Adebayor is our Drogba. There is nothing that this guy isn't good at. He's got power, pace, an eye for goal, control, is good in the air, skillful on the ground, can place it or smash it. Just an unbelievable striker. His problem is always his footnote to his praise, "....on his day". Ade's attitude seems to have changed heavily since the Togo stuff and hopefully he is a bit more grounded now. Either way, Mancini managed Ibrahimovic without a problem and that guy was batshit insane, he can handle big players. Comparison wise, I think we are BETTER than the rest of the top four.
Our widemen in Petrov, Bellamy, Sweep and now Johnson give us enough cover to play either guys who cut in, or guys who go wide. To me, Petrov is one of the best players I've seen in a City shirt, and has the ability to be a game changer. If he is on the left, and gets the ball to feet, he is an absolute joy to watch. He loves cutting inside and just smashing the ball in the net, but is equally good crossing. Maybe he lacks in defensive responsibility, and this is probably his downfall with some fans. He seems to be the latest one to pick up the 'lazy' tag since Robinho was dropped, and he's getting some pressure from the fans to perform better. I can't really defend him to this extent, like his Bulgarian counterparts in Berbatov and Bojinov, he does seem to just disappear in games sometimes and doesn't work hard enough. Maybe it's something that they put in the water over there.
SWP has played a disappointing number of games since Mancini has came. To be honest, this is more down to him not fitting in to our new system than anything else, and we saw last night that SWP, who looking over the course of the season has to be up there for Player of the Year, still has the ability to run teams in to the ground. He'll still get 25 games next season, with us in four competitions.
Johnson I'm reserving judgement on until I see him in our system a bit more. He looks bright though, and can only get better. I'd definitely put these guys up against the rest of the top four.
Ah, centre midfield, where all of our comparison falls apart. Despite what some on here think, I really rate Barry, Ireland and De Jong as a three in midfield. It seems balanced to me, Ireland the guy charging forward, De Jong doing the Makelele stuff that he excels at, and Barry linking them together. I think one of our main problems here, is that these guys play nearly every game and must be feeling the tiredness factor mentally and physically. I also think that they are a bit lost at times to who is doing what between Barry and Ireland. Stevie hasn't hit his form of last season (where to be fair, we played a far more open game), and he is starting to get the fans on his back. Perhaps his lack of holiday this year was a bad idea.
I'll be honest here, I don't get the Barry criticism. He does have bad games at times, but no worse than any other player in the league. For the price we bought him, I still think (apart from maybe Given) that he is the best piece of business that we have done. His movement and ability on the pitch is pretty much unquestionable, he's also great in a tackle and can pass with the best of them.
Viera is still to early to be judged, purely because you can tell he isn't fit. It's worth noting that the French manager came out yesterday and said that if he is playing regularly, he is going to the WC as French captain, so he is still rated within the game. I don't like how often that he seems to hit passes astray, or to people who simply don't want the ball. Hopefully, he'll tighten up in time. As a pure centre midfielder (which is how we play him, I don't get the DM vibe that others pick up) I hope he can give GazBaz a bit of leeway and a rest.
Unfortunately, that's it for centre mids (I'm not counting Kompany, Zab or Sylvinho there, simply because they aren't natural centre mids). I see we failed to address this problem in the transfer window and De Niro has a point about that. Having four natural centre's in a team that regularly puts three of them on a pitch together is a recipe for disaster. Our season would fall apart if we picked up two injuries in this position.
Defensively and in goal, I think we are pretty strong. I'm quite high on Toure, but I must admit that I've always been partial to a centre back who can take the ball out of defence. With him, Richards, Kompany (who has been fantastic recently), Nedum, Zab, Bridgy, and the young lad Boyata, I think we are pretty sharp here. Definitely as good as the Liverpool defence.
Overall, I'm willing to be patient about Mancini and our squad. We have the required quality, we have a proven winner in charge, and we have a good structure in the club. We aren't playing well, but we still aren't losing, which is the oft used cliche of Champions. All of the talk of a crisis is premature and to be honest, I think that many of the posters who were spouting yesterday would have probably have given a different opinion today. A forum by it's very nature is a place to woman and moan after a 'bad result', and we all need patience with each other as well as the team. I still feel that we are the better placed of any team to hit the top four, and I'm willing to wait until the end of the season before I judge the merits of Mancini as a manager. Actually, that's probably false, I'm more willing to wait until the end of next season (so that he gets a proper run at it), but whether the owners share this patience is debatable.
