Is it Mancini's brand of football that gets fans backs up?

[DD]

Haha thought this might happen but actually I'm glad because it is worth talking about.

The simple answer is yes. English football fans are just not used to it. It's embedded deep into their minds that, amongst other things, we play 4-4-2, we have fast wingers who get to the byline and get crosses in to a big brute of a centre forward. The playing style is a fast tempo, kick it and run after it as well as putting in a good strong tackle which inevitably gets the whole ground up and on their feet.

It might sound condescending but it is totally the way I see it. As soon as foreigners come here, put their foot on the ball and slow the tempo down the average English football fan gets his back up.

In terms of Mancini, he's made mistakes no doubt about it. The lack of a box-to-box midfielder imo is a total mystery and I'm hoping it's down to the right player not being available. If he's still here in the summer we will find out whether that is the reason or whether he is happy with what he's got. If that is to be the case then I would be worried.

His style of play does not irritate me one bit. Yes when you draw nil nil against teams you should be beating it is frustrating but I can see the bigger picture. Damocles is a hundred times better at explaining his tactics better than I can but I know from games this season that he doesn't want to play the sideway passing all the time. He wants to get forward and attack, with pace and wing backs but it hasn't quite come off. The funny thing is he is only 15 months into his reign here, if some of these things weren't sorted out in the summer I would be worried. I still think he's 2/3 players short of being the team that he wants us to be playing in the style he wants us to play.

What I am not worried about is Mancini as a manager and the style he adopts. I've waited for years to see City play the kind of football we have under him. The way we dictated the play at OT is exactly what I would expect from us in a years time. That is what Mancini wants us to do and how he wants us to play. With those 2/3 players I'm talking about we'd have won that game.

If he doesn't finish top 4 though, he will be gone. I don't want him to but he will be.

We'd live with the style of football if it was working but it isn't, and if you've waited years to see us stroll around playing one-paced, powder puff football with so few shots on target then I feel sorry for you.

We were ok at Old Trafford. To say we dictated the game is just laughable. We dictated it for two ten minute spells. When Keegan took us there in 2002-3, the second half of that game we dictated. Eyal Berkovic pulled the strings and we were a dream for 45 minutes. Our performance this year was nowhere close to that and, again, we had two shots on target, one of them a fluke.

The system has seen us piss away numerous points this season and gained us few that traditional Premier League football wouldn't have got us.

Mancini and his dreary approach to playing football has cost us a place in the Championship race - and don't you dare say we are still in it!:)

 

[Fourinarow]

You know what grinds my gears?

These stupid bits of paper that Bobby, Platt and Kid pull out to show players what to do when they come on etc. Is it master tactics that just don't work, or are the players that dumb that they can't take orders and know what to do when they go on?

Grrr.

 

[Dave Ewing's Back 'eader]

I can't understand why we cannot approach each and every match in the same way as we started the Aris match. Fifteen minutes at the start of unremitting pressure. I know Aris are no great shakes on their travels but the mindset for each match should be just that. We must set out to dominate - some might wonder if we have the players to do that, but there has been sufficient shown in enough matches so far this season that just makes me shake my head. Some games we can be breathtaking and when yer go to CoMS for a repeat we get pedestrianism.

Can't see us botherin' anybody playing football like that. It's not good enough, either, to bemoan the fact that some of our shots didn't go in! Yer 'ave to make 'em go in!

 

[fathellensbellend]

serious question, if you gave a man on the street 200/300 million to assemble a team, and surrounded him with ex pro's to advise him, where would he expect to finish in the league.

the calibre of players we are signing would mean that we should beat teams on ability alone, but the extra comes from the coach, the ability to mould a team and a squad to compete on all fronts, to have balance, width, flair, a plan b, sadly so many of these things are lacking.

after the hull game last season i stated we have appointed a clown, i got shot down in flames by many, and possibly rightly so, but fast forward a year and a bit and the progress made is minimal, the football by and large boring, and the squad still lacks vital ingrediants.

yes we can still have a very good season, but for the money spent, that should nearly be a gimme.

some decisions still astound me, after the hull game last season i questioned the logic of left footers on the right and vica versa, but many stated it allows the wide player to cut in, well thats all very well, but we have scored a paltry 2 headed goals this season, and yet we sign a striker for 27 million who will only thrive with service, but even worse it appears we have now sacrificed any real width, just predictably ploughing a furrow down the middle, unless unorthadox wide players in kolarov or richards venture forward.

the inclusion of vieria on JO are just frankly mind boggling, patrick has been a fantastic player, but hand on heart surely in our position we can expect far better than one of bobby's inter mates.

the tiredness excuse wears thin as well, and hardly motivates the squad, surely to win trophies you have to play lots of games, or am i missing something.

the approach in big games has by and large been woeful, virtually all have been damage limitation exercises, and when you pay 48 quid to go to these grounds, it would be nice to think the manager would send his team out to try and at least have a shot.

and to sum it up, i think the empty seats that will be on show sunday are a result of the uninteresting style of play we are witnessing, folk want entertaining, not to see a team of so called world stars defend a 1-0 lead against such luminaries as wigan.

 

[Fourinarow]

serious question, if you gave a man on the street 200/300 million to assemble a team, and surrounded him with ex pro's to advise him, where would he expect to finish in the league.

the calibre of players we are signing would mean that we should beat teams on ability alone, but the extra comes from the coach, the ability to mould a team and a squad to compete on all fronts, to have balance, width, flair, a plan b, sadly so many of these things are lacking.

after the hull game last season i stated we have appointed a clown, i got shot down in flames by many, and possibly rightly so, but fast forward a year and a bit and the progress made is minimal, the football by and large boring, and the squad still lacks vital ingrediants.

yes we can still have a very good season, but for the money spent, that should nearly be a gimme.

some decisions still astound me, after the hull game last season i questioned the logic of left footers on the right and vica versa, but many stated it allows the wide player to cut in, well thats all very well, but we have scored a paltry 2 headed goals this season, and yet we sign a striker for 27 million who will only thrive with service, but even worse it appears we have now sacrificed any real width, just predictably ploughing a furrow down the middle, unless unorthadox wide players in kolarov or richards venture forward.

the inclusion of vieria on JO are just frankly mind boggling, patrick has been a fantastic player, but hand on heart surely in our position we can expect far better than one of bobby's inter mates.

the tiredness excuse wears thin as well, and hardly motivates the squad, surely to win trophies you have to play lots of games, or am i missing something.

the approach in big games has by and large been woeful, virtually all have been damage limitation exercises, and when you pay 48 quid to go to these grounds, it would be nice to think the manager would send his team out to try and at least have a shot.

and to sum it up, i think the empty seats that will be on show sunday are a result of the uninteresting style of play we are witnessing, folk want entertaining, not to see a team of so called world stars defend a 1-0 lead against such luminaries as wigan.

Someone on my wavelength!

 

[DD]

serious question, if you gave a man on the street 200/300 million to assemble a team, and surrounded him with ex pro's to advise him, where would he expect to finish in the league.

the calibre of players we are signing would mean that we should beat teams on ability alone, but the extra comes from the coach, the ability to mould a team and a squad to compete on all fronts, to have balance, width, flair, a plan b, sadly so many of these things are lacking.

after the hull game last season i stated we have appointed a clown, i got shot down in flames by many, and possibly rightly so, but fast forward a year and a bit and the progress made is minimal, the football by and large boring, and the squad still lacks vital ingrediants.

yes we can still have a very good season, but for the money spent, that should nearly be a gimme.

some decisions still astound me, after the hull game last season i questioned the logic of left footers on the right and vica versa, but many stated it allows the wide player to cut in, well thats all very well, but we have scored a paltry 2 headed goals this season, and yet we sign a striker for 27 million who will only thrive with service, but even worse it appears we have now sacrificed any real width, just predictably ploughing a furrow down the middle, unless unorthadox wide players in kolarov or richards venture forward.

the inclusion of vieria on JO are just frankly mind boggling, patrick has been a fantastic player, but hand on heart surely in our position we can expect far better than one of bobby's inter mates.

the tiredness excuse wears thin as well, and hardly motivates the squad, surely to win trophies you have to play lots of games, or am i missing something.

the approach in big games has by and large been woeful, virtually all have been damage limitation exercises, and when you pay 48 quid to go to these grounds, it would be nice to think the manager would send his team out to try and at least have a shot.

and to sum it up, i think the empty seats that will be on show sunday are a result of the uninteresting style of play we are witnessing, folk want entertaining, not to see a team of so called world stars defend a 1-0 lead against such luminaries as wigan.

Absolutely spot on.

I'd like to see his supporters dissect that and answer each paragraph in turn but they can't.

In a lot of their cases, it's not that they can't see. It's that they don't want to see.

 

[Craig]

We'd live with the style of football if it was working but it isn't, and if you've waited years to see us stroll around playing one-paced, powder puff football with so few shots on target then I feel sorry for you.

We were ok at Old Trafford. To say we dictated the game is just laughable. We dictated it for two ten minute spells. When Keegan took us there in 2002-3, the second half of that game we dictated. Eyal Berkovic pulled the strings and we were a dream for 45 minutes. Our performance this year was nowhere close to that and, again, we had two shots on target, one of them a fluke.

The system has seen us piss away numerous points this season and gained us few that traditional Premier League football wouldn't have got us.

Mancini and his dreary approach to playing football has cost us a place in the Championship race - and don't you dare say we are still in it!:)[/quote]

Great post about Berkovic I was thinking about him when everyone was raving about Silva after the derby as if no City player in the last years could play like that.Berkovic absolutely ran the show against probably a better scum side.The performance against them was a decent one amidst weeks of shite.It was no more than decent though against a team that are looking average themselves this last month or so.

 

[ST Coleridge]

3) It's 'Tiki Taka', and it's Spanish, not Italian. Do you like Barca or Spain?

i can not believe you are comparing mancini's football to "barca or spain" what an absolute joke of a post

Oh Lordy. No mate, Mancini doesn't really play tiki taka, but Barca and Spain do. The previous poster asked that Mancini take his tippy tappy (sic) and fuck off back to Italia (sic). I wasn't making a comparison between City and Barca.

I reckon great thinkers like yourself, with your encyclopaedic knowledge of the game, might be in the majority on this thread. You should stick around and make friends, maybe arrange a key-swapping party or something for tomorrow night.

 

[Soulboy]

i can not believe you are comparing mancini's football to "barca or spain" what an absolute joke of a post

Oh Lordy. No mate, Mancini doesn't really play tiki taka, but Barca and Spain do. The previous poster asked that Mancini take his tippy tappy (sic) and fuck off back to Italia (sic). I wasn't making a comparison between City and Barca.

I reckon great thinkers like yourself, with your encyclopaedic knowledge of the game, might be in the majority on this thread. You should stick around and make friends, maybe arrange a key-swapping party or something for tomorrow night.

Actually, "tippy-tappy" and "Tiki Taka" are two completely separate things!

I've used the phrase "tippy tappy" for the best part of 30 years, long before Barca and Spain invented their own version of it! You're obviously not from around here!

Tippy tappy is the antithesis of Tiki Taka... it's about looking pretty without ever looking effective... which certainly can't be levelled against Barca or Spain!


It's always nice to help out...

 

[Skashion]

It definitely does piss off some fans but I couldn't care less about that. Our style of play certainly doesn't bore me. Our problems are that we're not punishing teams enough when we do break through and we're still lacking a Plan B - which I had expected to materialise when Dzeko signed, especially with Kolarov crosses coming in, which infuriatingly no-one has scored from yet.