Mancini out? (merged)

[crb]

I hate this article and all its jabs but half of the reason I hate it is because it's true. :/

-

Sam Wallace: Has the Premier League title ever been surrendered so pathetically?
When Gareth Barry scored his tragi-comic own goal he displayed the body language of a zombie

In the long and not always glorious history of football there may have been more disgracefully gutless performances than the one put in by the champions of England at Southampton on Saturday. There may also have been a more bizarre series of utterances than those which came from the mouth of the man who carried the most direct responsibility, the Manchester City manager, Roberto Mancini, but if compelling comparisons are somewhat elusive there is one thing about which we can be certain.

It is that never before can such a miserable example of broken down professionalism, of abandoned self-respect and a total failure to deliver a sliver of value for money (the transfer value of City's starters was approximately £206m, with substitutes James Milner, Aleksandar Kolarov and Maicon representing another £48m), have provoked less in the way of red-blooded outrage.

Mancini, who before the game lamented the possibility that quite soon very rich men may no longer be able to throw infinite amounts of money at the football team of their choice, did say that "big players" should display rather more convincing evidence that they possess "big balls".

But then given that his extremely expensive team had, in the process of an almost formal defeat by a side whose stars Jay Rodriguez and Rickie Lambert came at a combined cost of less than the year's salary of the missing Carlos Tevez, displayed a collective heart so minuscule the great Bill Shankly would surely have likened it to a caraway seed, it hardly seemed an excessive reaction.

We are told that Mancini will survive at least until the summer, by which time his Abu Dhabi employers might have to conclude that if their rival Roman Abramovich had a well-earned reputation for what might be described as brutal whimsicality, their own had come to occupy precisely the other end of the spectrum.

Sheikh Mansour and his cohorts should have known some time ago that their £1billion-plus investment in City was well on the way to becoming a shocking indictment of an idea nursed so lovingly in the upper echelons of the Premier League. They should have known that they were making a monument not to relentless spending and seamless progress but nightmare entrapment by the prospective demands of Financial Fair Play.

Mancini whined that he had been miserably supported in the summer transfer window and that because of this, rather than a painful lack of evidence that he might be able to develop the force and coherence of by far the strongest squad in the country, his defence of the Premier League title and expansion of hopes in the Champions League had been virtually destroyed.

Another truth was much easier to grasp this last weekend. It is that City have become a parody of a club who might be anywhere near taking their place at the heart of European football. Their dismissal from the Champions League was one shocking development. The tolerance of the Mario Balotelli situation was an affront to professional standards. The reinstatement of Tevez after his Munich mutiny was another compromise to make the flesh crawl.

After saying that Tevez would never again wear the City shirt, Mancini soon enough agreed that he might well be a powerful asset in the race for the Premier League finish. That, no doubt, helped to deliver City's first title since the one they landed rather more emphatically with the help of Lee, Bell and Summerbee 44 years earlier. But how much should you pay, in money and basic values, for one championship which in less than a year seems as if it might have happened in another lifetime?

When Gareth Barry scored his tragi-comic own goal at Southampton he displayed the body language of a zombie. It was also a reasonable way of defining the performance of most of his team-mates. It wasn't a defeat. It was a submission. It was a terrible statement about what happens when a team is separated from any sense that it can still achieve its most basic ambitions.

For many, it was almost entirely the fault of players grossly overpaid and seriously under-motivated. Of course they had their huge responsibilities and it wasn't only Mancini impelled to ask what had happened to the command and the wit of men like Yaya Touré and David Silva. Mancini says: "A player who plays like that should stay at home, not even be on the pitch. I don't want to see a player like we saw on Saturday. Usually, we play well and even when we don't play well, we put everything on the pitch. But we didn't even do that."

No, they didn't, demonstrably not, but then isn't it quite a key part of the manager's job to avoid such disaster? Mancini was recently pictured with his hands reaching for Balotelli's throat. There is another study of him linking hands with Tevez. He is, no doubt, an engaging football man with some notable achievements as both a player and a coach, but this doesn't mean so much now when he has to prove that there is really enough money in the world to make a great football team.

Meanwhile, Sir Alex Ferguson tells us that he sharply strengthened his planned team for the winning game against Everton after watching the City debacle. His reward was a 12-point lead – and the latest evidence that his once dangerous rivals surely have to think again.

The way I see it its like this ... It's ok to have a pop at your own family but if one of your friends did the same you'd wanna whack em regardless if they was right or wrong.

 

[Mr Ed (The Stables)]

To be honest we've been average all season (compared to last) apart from 3 games where we did hit the dizzy heights in terms of performance from last season.....and yet we are still second. That says more about the League.

Where we've gone wrong is last season United have improved, coupled with us going backwards. Standing still as a squad would have been better than what we did last summer but we haven't even managed that. In fact the rags bought again in January. Issues need to be addressed in the summer. One thing is for certain United will improve again and so will Chelsea, the question is will we? I'm not so sure.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Sam Wallace: Has the Premier League title ever been surrendered so pathetically?
When Gareth Barry scored his tragi-comic own goal he displayed the body language of a zombie

In the long and not always glorious history of football there may have been more disgracefully gutless performances than the one put in by the champions of England at Southampton on Saturday. There may also have been a more bizarre series of utterances than those which came from the mouth of the man who carried the most direct responsibility, the Manchester City manager, Roberto Mancini, but if compelling comparisons are somewhat elusive there is one thing about which we can be certain.

It is that never before can such a miserable example of broken down professionalism, of abandoned self-respect and a total failure to deliver a sliver of value for money (the transfer value of City's starters was approximately £206m, with substitutes James Milner, Aleksandar Kolarov and Maicon representing another £48m), have provoked less in the way of red-blooded outrage.

Mancini, who before the game lamented the possibility that quite soon very rich men may no longer be able to throw infinite amounts of money at the football team of their choice, did say that "big players" should display rather more convincing evidence that they possess "big balls".

But then given that his extremely expensive team had, in the process of an almost formal defeat by a side whose stars Jay Rodriguez and Rickie Lambert came at a combined cost of less than the year's salary of the missing Carlos Tevez, displayed a collective heart so minuscule the great Bill Shankly would surely have likened it to a caraway seed, it hardly seemed an excessive reaction.

We are told that Mancini will survive at least until the summer, by which time his Abu Dhabi employers might have to conclude that if their rival Roman Abramovich had a well-earned reputation for what might be described as brutal whimsicality, their own had come to occupy precisely the other end of the spectrum.

Sheikh Mansour and his cohorts should have known some time ago that their £1billion-plus investment in City was well on the way to becoming a shocking indictment of an idea nursed so lovingly in the upper echelons of the Premier League. They should have known that they were making a monument not to relentless spending and seamless progress but nightmare entrapment by the prospective demands of Financial Fair Play.

Mancini whined that he had been miserably supported in the summer transfer window and that because of this, rather than a painful lack of evidence that he might be able to develop the force and coherence of by far the strongest squad in the country, his defence of the Premier League title and expansion of hopes in the Champions League had been virtually destroyed.

Another truth was much easier to grasp this last weekend. It is that City have become a parody of a club who might be anywhere near taking their place at the heart of European football. Their dismissal from the Champions League was one shocking development. The tolerance of the Mario Balotelli situation was an affront to professional standards. The reinstatement of Tevez after his Munich mutiny was another compromise to make the flesh crawl.

After saying that Tevez would never again wear the City shirt, Mancini soon enough agreed that he might well be a powerful asset in the race for the Premier League finish. That, no doubt, helped to deliver City's first title since the one they landed rather more emphatically with the help of Lee, Bell and Summerbee 44 years earlier. But how much should you pay, in money and basic values, for one championship which in less than a year seems as if it might have happened in another lifetime?

When Gareth Barry scored his tragi-comic own goal at Southampton he displayed the body language of a zombie. It was also a reasonable way of defining the performance of most of his team-mates. It wasn't a defeat. It was a submission. It was a terrible statement about what happens when a team is separated from any sense that it can still achieve its most basic ambitions.

For many, it was almost entirely the fault of players grossly overpaid and seriously under-motivated. Of course they had their huge responsibilities and it wasn't only Mancini impelled to ask what had happened to the command and the wit of men like Yaya Touré and David Silva. Mancini says: "A player who plays like that should stay at home, not even be on the pitch. I don't want to see a player like we saw on Saturday. Usually, we play well and even when we don't play well, we put everything on the pitch. But we didn't even do that."

No, they didn't, demonstrably not, but then isn't it quite a key part of the manager's job to avoid such disaster? Mancini was recently pictured with his hands reaching for Balotelli's throat. There is another study of him linking hands with Tevez. He is, no doubt, an engaging football man with some notable achievements as both a player and a coach, but this doesn't mean so much now when he has to prove that there is really enough money in the world to make a great football team.

Meanwhile, Sir Alex Ferguson tells us that he sharply strengthened his planned team for the winning game against Everton after watching the City debacle. His reward was a 12-point lead – and the latest evidence that his once dangerous rivals surely have to think again.

I hate this article and all its jabs but half of the reason I hate it is because it's true. :/

It is a load of sensationalist, tendentious horseshit. Three games ago we were within five points of united and according to that article 270 minutes of football later the whole 'project' has been derailed.

It bears all the hallmarks of someone who has been waiting since we beat West Brom at home last season, and all that followed it, to stick the knife in. He asks has there ever been a more pathetic surrender of a Premier League title? Well, united won the league by five points in 2002/3 and finished third in 2003/4, fifteen points behind Arsenal ending up on 75 points - a figure I am happy to wager with anyone, including Sam Wallace, that we will exceed. united lost nine games that season btw.

Anyone would think that we were struggling to qualify for Europe, rather than sat in second place. This article sums up the thinly veiled contempt that many journalists have for us in daring to try and break the prevailing cartel in English football. Perhaps he should be more concerned that we had to spend those levels of money to try and take on the Ancien Regime, especially through the impending prism of FFP.

Saturday was a truly awful performance, but this season, our spirit has been praised on several occasions by more temperate observers than Sam Wallace: WBA away; Arsenal away; Reading home; Fulham away; Spurs home; Newcastle away. The fact that to some ninety awful minutes, but still only ninety minutes, provides conclusive proof of the club's lack of direction and moral compass says everything about their true feelings for Manchester City.

Edit: number of edits due to the fact that I changed the season to illustrate my point, but the 2000/1 & 2001/2 turnaround for united was almost as pronounced.

 

[MCC]

Quality Gordon! Someone please send that to Sammy boy.

 

[Greenjob]

Sam Wallace: Has the Premier League title ever been surrendered so pathetically?
When Gareth Barry scored his tragi-comic own goal he displayed the body language of a zombie

In the long and not always glorious history of football there may have been more disgracefully gutless performances than the one put in by the champions of England at Southampton on Saturday. There may also have been a more bizarre series of utterances than those which came from the mouth of the man who carried the most direct responsibility, the Manchester City manager, Roberto Mancini, but if compelling comparisons are somewhat elusive there is one thing about which we can be certain.

It is that never before can such a miserable example of broken down professionalism, of abandoned self-respect and a total failure to deliver a sliver of value for money (the transfer value of City's starters was approximately £206m, with substitutes James Milner, Aleksandar Kolarov and Maicon representing another £48m), have provoked less in the way of red-blooded outrage.

Mancini, who before the game lamented the possibility that quite soon very rich men may no longer be able to throw infinite amounts of money at the football team of their choice, did say that "big players" should display rather more convincing evidence that they possess "big balls".

But then given that his extremely expensive team had, in the process of an almost formal defeat by a side whose stars Jay Rodriguez and Rickie Lambert came at a combined cost of less than the year's salary of the missing Carlos Tevez, displayed a collective heart so minuscule the great Bill Shankly would surely have likened it to a caraway seed, it hardly seemed an excessive reaction.

We are told that Mancini will survive at least until the summer, by which time his Abu Dhabi employers might have to conclude that if their rival Roman Abramovich had a well-earned reputation for what might be described as brutal whimsicality, their own had come to occupy precisely the other end of the spectrum.

Sheikh Mansour and his cohorts should have known some time ago that their £1billion-plus investment in City was well on the way to becoming a shocking indictment of an idea nursed so lovingly in the upper echelons of the Premier League. They should have known that they were making a monument not to relentless spending and seamless progress but nightmare entrapment by the prospective demands of Financial Fair Play.

Mancini whined that he had been miserably supported in the summer transfer window and that because of this, rather than a painful lack of evidence that he might be able to develop the force and coherence of by far the strongest squad in the country, his defence of the Premier League title and expansion of hopes in the Champions League had been virtually destroyed.

Another truth was much easier to grasp this last weekend. It is that City have become a parody of a club who might be anywhere near taking their place at the heart of European football. Their dismissal from the Champions League was one shocking development. The tolerance of the Mario Balotelli situation was an affront to professional standards. The reinstatement of Tevez after his Munich mutiny was another compromise to make the flesh crawl.

After saying that Tevez would never again wear the City shirt, Mancini soon enough agreed that he might well be a powerful asset in the race for the Premier League finish. That, no doubt, helped to deliver City's first title since the one they landed rather more emphatically with the help of Lee, Bell and Summerbee 44 years earlier. But how much should you pay, in money and basic values, for one championship which in less than a year seems as if it might have happened in another lifetime?

When Gareth Barry scored his tragi-comic own goal at Southampton he displayed the body language of a zombie. It was also a reasonable way of defining the performance of most of his team-mates. It wasn't a defeat. It was a submission. It was a terrible statement about what happens when a team is separated from any sense that it can still achieve its most basic ambitions.

For many, it was almost entirely the fault of players grossly overpaid and seriously under-motivated. Of course they had their huge responsibilities and it wasn't only Mancini impelled to ask what had happened to the command and the wit of men like Yaya Touré and David Silva. Mancini says: "A player who plays like that should stay at home, not even be on the pitch. I don't want to see a player like we saw on Saturday. Usually, we play well and even when we don't play well, we put everything on the pitch. But we didn't even do that."

No, they didn't, demonstrably not, but then isn't it quite a key part of the manager's job to avoid such disaster? Mancini was recently pictured with his hands reaching for Balotelli's throat. There is another study of him linking hands with Tevez. He is, no doubt, an engaging football man with some notable achievements as both a player and a coach, but this doesn't mean so much now when he has to prove that there is really enough money in the world to make a great football team.

Meanwhile, Sir Alex Ferguson tells us that he sharply strengthened his planned team for the winning game against Everton after watching the City debacle. His reward was a 12-point lead – and the latest evidence that his once dangerous rivals surely have to think again.

I hate this article and all its jabs but half of the reason I hate it is because it's true. :/

It is a load of sensationalist, tendentious horseshit. Three games ago we were within five points of united and according to that article 270 minutes of football later the whole 'project' has been derailed.

It bears all the hallmarks of someone who has been waiting since we beat West Brom at home last season, and all that followed it, to stick the knife in. He asks has there ever been a more pathetic surrender of a Premier League title? Well, united won the league by ten points in 2000/1 and finished third in 2001/2, ten points behind Arsenal ending up on 77 points - a figure I am happy to wager with anyone, including Sam Wallace, that we will exceed. united lost nine games that season btw.

Anyone would think that we were struggling to qualify for Europe, rather than sat in second place. This article sums up the thinly veiled contempt that many journalists have for us in daring to try and break the prevailing cartel in English football. Perhaps he should be more concerned that we had to spend those levels of money to try and take on the Ancien Regime, especially through the impending prism of FFP.

Saturday was a truly awful performance, but this season, our spirit has been praised on several occasions by more temperate observers than Sam Wallace: WBA away; Arsenal away; Reading home; Fulham away; Spurs home; Newcastle away. The fact that to some ninety awful minutes, but still only ninety minutes, provides conclusive proof of the club's lack of direction and moral compass says everything about their true feelings for Manchester City.

Put so succinctly, good effort.

 

[Gaylord du Bois]

Well said Gordon. In actual fact they lost 9 games in their surrender of the title and it was another 4 seasons before they won it again.

 

[Kazzydeyna]

I blamed the board from the start... and I still do now.



We knew fully well that next door would be stronger as they went out and signed RVP. But instead, we brought in Garcia, Nastastic, Maicon, Rodwell and Sinclair... £50mil of shite that actually managed to do something no one else has ever done, weaken our squad.

Of all the shit we've done in the past, we've one done it again... we did the same with RSC and Bridge.

The only things i've got issues with Mancini is his selection choices. Never understood was why Lescott was dropped, him and Vinnie were solid all season. And whilst Nastastic hasn't done too bad of a job, he's better as a squad player. And the continuous addition of Nasri.

If the club wants to retain the title, you've got to back the manager... it's pretty evident they've not done that this season. So if it's anyones head, Marwood has got to take some responsibility.

I think Mancini's comment said it all:

"When you win a title, you need to improve the team. We did not improve the team. This is a problem."

And I don't think that is necessarily true, but we were neck and neck with United last year and this year they added Van Persie. Did we think it would be the same again?

And of course we need stability at the club, who is there out there? Mourinho? In the long term run he's a disaster. Every club he leaves ends up in a mess. Chelsea fell apart after he had gone and look at the fucking state of Inter Milan now. Get rid of Mancini and the problem gets even worse.

1) To this day we're still stuck with the deadwood Hughes brought in.
2) Players revolt - Some players will want out.
3) New manager will no doubt want a whole new squad, something that is not possible with FFP.
4) From a PR point of view - Another mess to clean up... the media will rip right into us for it.

Mancini has got us into the CL, won us the FA Cup and the Premier League. Next time he needs trust and for the board to do exactly as he says.

Agreed. Agreed. Agreed.

 

[Moody]

Can't say as I'm sorry, given that hysterical response. You got labelled a rag by several people (not just me) precisely because with just 26 posts to your name, your whimsical tale of your wife calling you "bitter" cos you "hate the rags so much", and your comparison of Taggart and Mancini, you bore all the hallmarks of one. If you can't see that I can't help you. Good luck to you if you're a Blue, but this site has numerous bellend visitors from Planet Stretford I'm afraid and you send the old nostrils a-twitching

I got called a rag last night by some tit, I've been going to City since 1975. All because I had the audacity to question Mancini. There are far too many of you (super fans) that use that as a standard line because someone dares to say something negative about the club.
Everyone wants us to do the best we can, and believe me this is wonderland compared to some shite we've watched in the past. But that's the past, people slag Liverpool off for living in the past, but our fans harp back to it all the time, saying you're a rag or a glory hunter if you dare say anything negative about the current situation. We have spent a ridiculous amount of money and we should be performing better.... But I think he has lost the dressing room, his autocratic non personal style will bring him down

There's a difference between labelling someone a rag just because they question something, and labelling someone a rag based on their profile though. Under 20 posts, use of the words "massive" and/or "bitter" are usually pretty good indicators

wow how paranoid are you, I'm sorry didn't know those words suggest your a red I'll be more carefull in future! Do me a favour...Im a blue through and through but just because I don't worship mancini and have mixed views about him does not make me a red.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

I'm sorry didn't know those words suggest your a red

Of course you didn't sweetcheeks.

 

[Anonymous]

Hmm...

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/roberto-mancini-refused-to-enter-the-manchester-city-dressing-room-after-southampton-defeat-8490914.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/foot ... 90914.html</a>

If this is true then it is just another nail in Mancini's coffin. People need to stop blindly backing him and wake up to the reality of what kind of leader he is.