greasedupdeafguy said:
willy eckerslike said:
sam-caddick said:
That's how I view it.
From a personal level I am grateful of seeing City winning any sort of trophy but in all honesty that mentality comes from when your team has not got the quality that sees them expectant to win trophies.
For this team to only win one league and one league cup in three seasons despite having the best overall quality in those three seasons is a massive underachievement.
I think there is a big mental block over our players as I don't think they truly believe they have what it takes to have that self belief of being champions, there have been many big games in all competitions when they have chocked.
There's been a lot of talk about having the best players/squad for the last three years - but it just isn't that simple. It takes time to get a squad to gel, regardless of the player quality, and at the same time change the mentality of the whole club into winners. We started building a team around Mancini and it became obvious last season that the style of management wouldn't reach the level of success the owners aspire to so took the decision to make the change. Whilst it could be said we are under-achieving, there are mitigating circumstances this year with the new playing and coaching systems and fitness issues with players in key positions. These will not be issues next year.
True but you look at the competition
Liverpool - people would have laughed in your face if you said they won finish higher than us this season.
chelsea - Spent a lot but have a very young squad and still no top striker.
Arsenal - no real depth to their squad
united - fuck knows whats happened to them considering they finished 11 points clear last season.
You look at our squad and the majority of players are at their peak and good number of them have been together for a few years now. Yet their has been no real improvement since the title win.
I'm not sure it's that straight forward.
Yes, few people were tipping Liverpool to be real contenders, but plenty were aware that their form over the back end of last season was excellent. Couple it with the fact of having very few distractions/additional cup matches, and getting lucky with injuries, and it's perhaps not all too surprising that they're up there.
Chelsea are obviously lacking a striker (of Mourinho's own choice, it should be added), but they're hardly a young squad (Terry, Lampard, Cole, Cech, Etoo ...). They too have got lucky with injuries - i.e. they seem to be have been able to field the same back four for pretty much every game as far as I can tell? Their midfielders may perhaps lack the quality of Fernandinho and Yaya, but they've still got good options, and every bit as much depth as we have. With regards wingers/attacking midfielders, I definitely give them the edge: Hazard, Oscar, Willian, Schuerrle, Salah (+ Mata for half a season). There's also been a much more marginal transition in their style of play from Benitez to Mourinho compared to us going from Mancini to Pellegrini.
Arsenal lack depth in certain areas (again, notably up front); but they too have got far more options than we have in terms of attacking midfielders/wingers (Walcott, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Ozil, Cazorla, Rosicky, Podolski, Ramsey), for example.
So I don't really buy this line that we have a bigger/far superior squad to everybody else. We have very few options to rotate in the centre of midfield for example. And we've been hampered by lengthy injuries to key players (Aguero, Kompany) and by having three players (Richards, Rodwell and Jovetic) who have hardly been available at all. Zabaleta, for example, looks absolutely goosed at the moment, simply because he's had to play every game with Richards being unavailable.
