Mancini fear of failure?

[Anonymous]

Pretty common knowledge we wanted Hiddink. So Mancini will have known back then he wasn't first choice. Although it's true there's a relationship between Khaldoon and him - I don't see that having any baring on whether or not he'll keep his job. Only results will decide that.

 

[Andouble]

Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp has bemoaned his side's injury problems after confirming that Jermain Defoe suffered an ankle injury during the club's warm-weather training camp in Dubai.

"Defoe has an injury again. He's had a problem with his ankle before and it didn't feel too good,'' Redknapp said in Dubai-based newspaper The National. "We're trying to finish in the top four and it's so close. But we've got so many players injured, people forget.

"We've got Tom Huddlestone, Younes Kaboul, Ledley King, [Jonathan] Woodgate, [Gareth] Bale, [Rafael] Van der Vaart. If you could pick a team of injured players it would be a fantastic team.''

we aren't the only team struggling. Let's see how this whole top 4 thing plays out before sacking the entire club.

 

[SWP's back]

a) don't you call what I think dumb.

If you think that it is wrong to call the idea that 19 other teams have declined and we have stayed exactly still, as the reason for the same points/games ratio as dumb, then you have greater problems than your opinions on this forum.

b) I exaggerated on everybody else, but the other teams around us(having spent much less than us) have either made tiny improvements(none more than 3 points) or capitulated(Chelsea/Liverpool), and we have made no progress at all on points. It isn't progress to be at the same level last season.

Firstly, you keep trotting out his idea about money spent. The cold, hard fact is that money spent equals the square root of fuck all. Ask Leeds what a shedload of money buys you. Or QPR. Or Malaga.

Secondly, you cannot measure progress on points for the reasons stated earlier. To save you the look up, these were because this is a completely different league with different teams in it this year and different squads, and because we haven't played the same games this year as we had by this point last year (and neither has the rest of the league). You may as well compare the amount of offsides last year to this one as it provides the same measure of success.

Easy example for you; imagine trying to compare this City to the City two years ago. This is the exact same reason why you cannot compare teams across different seasons.

c) I pay to go and watch us win and be entertaining at the same time, it's a sport but it's also about being successful and having enjoyment watching the product. Gritty 1-0 wins are great on occassion but we don't even do that, and with all the money spent for us to play well shouldn't be a big ask.

"Product"? "Entertaining"?

Listen, this is a sporting competition. If you want entertaining football, stick to FIFA. There's a reason why the game's points are awarded on the basis of who won and not who played better football.

It wasn't YOUR money that the Sheikh spent, and it has absolutely nothing to do with you whether he spent £1 or £1 billion on the team. You are supposed to attend because you support the athletes competing on the field. Paying doesn't give you any right to dictate what you want to see on the pitch, not even a bit of a right.

City owe you absolutely nothing. They owe me absolutely nothing. They owe all of us absolutely nothing. They are a business based upon sporting competition, no different from a MMA promotion or Sale Harriers. Their first priority is to win games, not to entertain me and you.

That's the difference you see, as you said yourself you "pay to go and watch us win and be entertaining at the same time, ... it's also about being successful and having enjoyment watching the product". I pay to go and watch City because they are the club I've supported since I was a boy and want to see them compete live in the flesh.

There's a horrific sense of entitlement that the Premiership (or Sky or whatever) has bred into fans, where they believe that spending money gives them a right to dictate how a team should perform because THEY need to be entertained.

If you want entertainment, watch a circus. If you want watch sporting competition, I'll see you at Eastlands.

d) We should have got more than 5 points in the last 5 games, not drawn with Blackburn at home, Birmingham away, Fulham home and we should not have lost to Everton home, Villa away, Sunderland away, so even if we were still 3rd we should be on the tails of the top 2 instead of clawing onto 3rd and the CL by virtue of playing more games.

Two problems with this;

1. Why exactly should we have won those games? What gives us the unalienable right to just turn up and walk over other teams?
2. Even on even games we are in the CL places.

Simply brilliant Damocles.

Sums it up perfectly.

I hate what money seems to have done to some of our fans.

Spoilt kids sums some of them up.

 

[blueinsa]

I suppose that time will be the judge, especially so if we fail to qualify for the CL this season...

Too many are forgetting that we are as much a business project as we are a footballing one and that the business side will only reach the heights our owner wants once CL football is the norm.

FFPR has just brought that scenario right forward to now!

exact , FFP has changed a lot in the original project slowing all, but many people here still talk about "unlimited founds" while the truth is that ATM the hardest work mancini and the board are doing is try to dont lose too much on some players market value

With respect mancio, Bobby should be concentrating on one thing and one thing only and that is creating a squad of players that he can pick a team from every week that knows their jobs both individually and as a team. he should have everyone on board and they should all be going out on that pitch with the collective belief that the plans they have are workable and the best they can be. He does that and the fans see that as a team we are progressing, he will get the backing required and i have no doubt that we will acheive the success we all want desperately.

The problem is that he still doesn't seem to know his best 11, many players seem to not know what their jobs are, players are played out of position and it appears that many of them seem unhappy, something that seems apparent from press reports, body language on the pitch and something that was ultimately borne out when our captain and best player decided he wanted out mid season.

Bobby just has to have all his squad behind him and if he cant even get that, his tenure with us will just not succeed unfortunately and he will go.

Thats his job, his responsibility and none of us can help him with that...

 

[Damocles]

Serious question Dam...............do you believe that RM knows what his best starting 11 is?

No, I don't think he does, but this isn't the type of manager he is. You have to remember that him, Platt and Lombardo all played for a long stretch together at Sampdoria under Eriksson and Mancini credits him as a mentor in the same way that Mourinho does with Sir Bobby Robson.

Sven introduced the new tactical regimes to Italy at a time when everybody was still stuck trying to emulate Herrerra, so he was highly influential. One of his tenets at this time though, which others including Mancini later developed into their universality theory, was never having a "first 11" but instead having a "first 18" which could adapt to different circumstances against different opposition. That school of thought sees a first 11 as far too predictable and easy to counter. Football is like chess to these people, and they are thinking several moves ahead.

Ironically enough, when Sven first became England manager, Mancini (his assistant at Lazio) told of a conversation where Sven said that he wanted Italian defending over here but adapt it to the traditional English 4-4-2. As far as I am concerned, neither Mancini nor Sven has managed to do this yet. However, when he does eventually get this formula right (though our 4-4-2 has moved to a 4-2-3-1), we will be absolutely unbeatable.

The attention to detail and organisational skills that Italian defending brings is tough to play in this country because the speed that our centre backs have to make decisions is ridiculously quick. We seemed to be getting there bit by bit, but the De Jong injury has made it even quicker for our defenders to react (as there's nobody to 'run interference' for them any more) and has just totally buried us. In addition to this, the poor form of our fullbacks and our keeper's inability to properly deal with high balls recently has all contributed.

We have the players for this approach to work. Toure and Kompany are two of the most intelligent defenders that I've ever seen, and with De Jong in front of them and Kolarov (or often Barry when he goes for a run up the pitch) covering the left, and Zab on the right, we have a very intelligent defence with an excellent range of passing who would be capable of playing that type of defence.

I don't think Kolarov or Boateng are really there yet and this has hurt our tactics quite a lot. De Jong is obviously the most important miss, and the quicker we get him back, the better we will play. Silva missing doesn't exactly help nor does AJ as they both quicken the pace of the game in a way that Yaya and Barry aren't required to from the centre of midfield.

I think that Mancini is starting to realise that now isn't the time to be trying to gell Dzeko into our system. We played ten times better once he came off for Vieira the other day, and in the Premier League, his speed of thought isn't there yet, which as mentioned is the most crucial attribute for any one of our players to have.

So, I suppose a more accurate answer is that that I don't believe that Mancini knows his best 11, but I don't think he sees that as a problem, though his idea of football and tactics for this City side are completely fucked by injuries and by the form of some important players, so his idea of a best 18 isn't working either.

 

[Didsbury Dave]

If you think that it is wrong to call the idea that 19 other teams have declined and we have stayed exactly still, as the reason for the same points/games ratio as dumb, then you have greater problems than your opinions on this forum.



Firstly, you keep trotting out his idea about money spent. The cold, hard fact is that money spent equals the square root of fuck all. Ask Leeds what a shedload of money buys you. Or QPR. Or Malaga.

Secondly, you cannot measure progress on points for the reasons stated earlier. To save you the look up, these were because this is a completely different league with different teams in it this year and different squads, and because we haven't played the same games this year as we had by this point last year (and neither has the rest of the league). You may as well compare the amount of offsides last year to this one as it provides the same measure of success.

Easy example for you; imagine trying to compare this City to the City two years ago. This is the exact same reason why you cannot compare teams across different seasons.




"Product"? "Entertaining"?

Listen, this is a sporting competition. If you want entertaining football, stick to FIFA. There's a reason why the game's points are awarded on the basis of who won and not who played better football.

It wasn't YOUR money that the Sheikh spent, and it has absolutely nothing to do with you whether he spent £1 or £1 billion on the team. You are supposed to attend because you support the athletes competing on the field. Paying doesn't give you any right to dictate what you want to see on the pitch, not even a bit of a right.

City owe you absolutely nothing. They owe me absolutely nothing. They owe all of us absolutely nothing. They are a business based upon sporting competition, no different from a MMA promotion or Sale Harriers. Their first priority is to win games, not to entertain me and you.

That's the difference you see, as you said yourself you "pay to go and watch us win and be entertaining at the same time, ... it's also about being successful and having enjoyment watching the product". I pay to go and watch City because they are the club I've supported since I was a boy and want to see them compete live in the flesh.

There's a horrific sense of entitlement that the Premiership (or Sky or whatever) has bred into fans, where they believe that spending money gives them a right to dictate how a team should perform because THEY need to be entertained.

If you want entertainment, watch a circus. If you want watch sporting competition, I'll see you at Eastlands.



Two problems with this;

1. Why exactly should we have won those games? What gives us the unalienable right to just turn up and walk over other teams?
2. Even on even games we are in the CL places.

Simply brilliant Damocles.

Sums it up perfectly.

I hate what money seems to have done to some of our fans.

Spoilt kids sums some of them up.

If you want to play at simplistic playground generalisations, I'd say mamcinis hair and scarf has turned some of our fans into stepford wives.

But it would ruin what is a decent debate. And we all know what you think of us city fans: "shit fans" was the term you used.

 

[K.Reeves right foot]

It is not. Not even in the slightest.

Explain then, or if you have already done so, can you copy? Sorry too lazy to scroll back

I think it's a flawed post for various reasons but chiefly for a catastrophic oversight on his behalf. He alludes on several occsasions to us merely being on a poor run of form due to injuries. However, for me and I believe many on here, there is a much wider and worrying picture thats been evident for a long time now.
This situation now hasn't just developed due to a few injuries it has been symptematic of the mindset Mancini is instilling into our players and has done from day one. That is, strangle the life out of the players, play a slow Italian style game and the mentality of to not lose especially in the big games which sort out the achievers from the also rans. Mancini - he fails to realise - simply has NO bottle to win big games which matter and any manager's style is invariably stamped all over the team, on the pitch. The manager sets the tone, the players follow as in any team that existed. Damocles spectacularly looks at the picture as an isolated snapshot without addressing all the issues which started when Mancini arrived and continue to do so. Basically he's oversimplified it into a matter of a few injuries. Spurs have had many many more injuries than we have had. Chelsea too, it's part of football. Those clubs and no other clubs had a cheque book with 'buy any player you want' stamped on it in the summer like Mancini did therefore injuries [unless so catastrophic as to rule out the entire squad] don't wash.
He mentions 'playing style' as being not too our [the fans] liking. Sorry Damocles but the playing style is not compatible with success in the PL. Has nothing to do with whether we like it or not, it simply won't win anythin in this league. It is too slow. Opposition defences have it easy against our slow build up play, lack of width and lask of genuine pace anywhere on the pitch. Mancini should have worked that out during the summer and rectified it yet STILL 15 months later we watch as our players stroll around, allowing 10 opposition players to get behind the ball and then we are faced with a brick wall of waiting defenders......if he can't se it now, he never will.
Maybe other points but there's a few as to why I said his post was not good. Passionate yes, but flawed and too simplistic and overlooking deep rooted flaws in Mancini's management style for us to be succesful.

 

[Numptyed]

Serious question Dam...............do you believe that RM knows what his best starting 11 is?

No, I don't think he does, but this isn't the type of manager he is. You have to remember that him, Platt and Lombardo all played for a long stretch together at Sampdoria under Eriksson and Mancini credits him as a mentor in the same way that Mourinho does with Sir Bobby Robson.

Sven introduced the new tactical regimes to Italy at a time when everybody was still stuck trying to emulate Herrerra, so he was highly influential. One of his tenets at this time though, which others including Mancini later developed into their universality theory, was never having a "first 11" but instead having a "first 18" which could adapt to different circumstances against different opposition. That school of thought sees a first 11 as far too predictable and easy to counter. Football is like chess to these people, and they are thinking several moves ahead.

Ironically enough, when Sven first became England manager, Mancini (his assistant at Lazio) told of a conversation where Sven said that he wanted Italian defending over here but adapt it to the traditional English 4-4-2. As far as I am concerned, neither Mancini nor Sven has managed to do this yet. However, when he does eventually get this formula right (though our 4-4-2 has moved to a 4-2-3-1), we will be absolutely unbeatable.

The attention to detail and organisational skills that Italian defending brings is tough to play in this country because the speed that our centre backs have to make decisions is ridiculously quick. We seemed to be getting there bit by bit, but the De Jong injury has made it even quicker for our defenders to react (as there's nobody to 'run interference' for them any more) and has just totally buried us. In addition to this, the poor form of our fullbacks and our keeper's inability to properly deal with high balls recently has all contributed.

We have the players for this approach to work. Toure and Kompany are two of the most intelligent defenders that I've ever seen, and with De Jong in front of them and Kolarov (or often Barry when he goes for a run up the pitch) covering the left, and Zab on the right, we have a very intelligent defence with an excellent range of passing who would be capable of playing that type of defence.

I don't think Kolarov or Boateng are really there yet and this has hurt our tactics quite a lot. De Jong is obviously the most important miss, and the quicker we get him back, the better we will play. Silva missing doesn't exactly help nor does AJ as they both quicken the pace of the game in a way that Yaya and Barry aren't required to from the centre of midfield.

I think that Mancini is starting to realise that now isn't the time to be trying to gell Dzeko into our system. We played ten times better once he came off for Vieira the other day, and in the Premier League, his speed of thought isn't there yet, which as mentioned is the most crucial attribute for any one of our players to have.

So, I suppose a more accurate answer is that that I don't believe that Mancini knows his best 11, but I don't think he sees that as a problem, though his idea of football and tactics for this City side are completely fucked by injuries and by the form of some important players, so his idea of a best 18 isn't working either.

Amen! Fantastic post.

 

[blueinsa]

Serious question Dam...............do you believe that RM knows what his best starting 11 is?

No, I don't think he does, but this isn't the type of manager he is. You have to remember that him, Platt and Lombardo all played for a long stretch together at Sampdoria under Eriksson and Mancini credits him as a mentor in the same way that Mourinho does with Sir Bobby Robson.

Sven introduced the new tactical regimes to Italy at a time when everybody was still stuck trying to emulate Herrerra, so he was highly influential. One of his tenets at this time though, which others including Mancini later developed into their universality theory, was never having a "first 11" but instead having a "first 18" which could adapt to different circumstances against different opposition. That school of thought sees a first 11 as far too predictable and easy to counter. Football is like chess to these people, and they are thinking several moves ahead.

Ironically enough, when Sven first became England manager, Mancini (his assistant at Lazio) told of a conversation where Sven said that he wanted Italian defending over here but adapt it to the traditional English 4-4-2. As far as I am concerned, neither Mancini nor Sven has managed to do this yet. However, when he does eventually get this formula right (though our 4-4-2 has moved to a 4-2-3-1), we will be absolutely unbeatable.

The attention to detail and organisational skills that Italian defending brings is tough to play in this country because the speed that our centre backs have to make decisions is ridiculously quick. We seemed to be getting there bit by bit, but the De Jong injury has made it even quicker for our defenders to react (as there's nobody to 'run interference' for them any more) and has just totally buried us. In addition to this, the poor form of our fullbacks and our keeper's inability to properly deal with high balls recently has all contributed.

We have the players for this approach to work. Toure and Kompany are two of the most intelligent defenders that I've ever seen, and with De Jong in front of them and Kolarov (or often Barry when he goes for a run up the pitch) covering the left, and Zab on the right, we have a very intelligent defence with an excellent range of passing who would be capable of playing that type of defence.

I don't think Kolarov or Boateng are really there yet and this has hurt our tactics quite a lot. De Jong is obviously the most important miss, and the quicker we get him back, the better we will play. Silva missing doesn't exactly help nor does AJ as they both quicken the pace of the game in a way that Yaya and Barry aren't required to from the centre of midfield.

I think that Mancini is starting to realise that now isn't the time to be trying to gell Dzeko into our system. We played ten times better once he came off for Vieira the other day, and in the Premier League, his speed of thought isn't there yet, which as mentioned is the most crucial attribute for any one of our players to have.

So, I suppose a more accurate answer is that that I don't believe that Mancini knows his best 11, but I don't think he sees that as a problem, though his idea of football and tactics for this City side are completely fucked by injuries and by the form of some important players, so his idea of a best 18 isn't working either.

Which leaves us with the big question of does he have a plan B and can he adapt his own thoughts and beliefs around the problems he is facing and get it working in another way?

It really is time for the man to step up and prove to many he does and he can.

It really is all down to him.

 

[Deleted member 14625]

Beginning to lose faith in the man to be honest. I'm more worried watching City these days than I have ever been, which is ridiculous considering we are now regarded as one of the big clubs.

The simple fact is there's more to lose. In the past a bad performance, draw or defeat would just blend in with everyone else's bad performances, draws or defeats down in the bottom half. Or even in lower divisions there were more games to make amends. Now, every single goal and point matters or we will lose out on so much more than the amount of money between 15th and 14th!