I honestly don't think this is solely down to Mancini... seeing him at the fans forum, he's gone up in my estimation. The stuff about him in the press being an egotistical dictator is complete rubbish.
We were overly negative last season, but i can our overall plan being to dominate possession and wear teams down, using players like AJ, Tevez, Silva and Johnson to unlock teams that will generally sit back against us home or away.
Gung Ho football doesn't work, even Wenger has realised that now, he's not won anything for fivev years trying to play all out attacking football. Thats why players like Denilson and Song are getting more game time for Arsenal.
I think our problem is some of the players... Yaya, imo has been disappointing so far. Perhaps he thought coming from Barca this would be a stroll. Hopefully he's finding out he;s got to give more each game to keep his place.
The other two big issues for me are Barry and Milner... both bought from Villa who we're playing above themselves and whilst not actually doing anything ground breaking, were considered to be successful.
Now they're here, they are no longer the big fish, game plans are no longer built around them and a half decent performance is no longer "good enough".
I think they've both struggled to adapt to supporting roles and so far neither have given enough since they've been here.
We still don't look anywhere near as efficient as Chelsea do, they know where each player will be and can pass the ball around as almost second instinct. I think we need to up our work rate if we want to be continually successful too. Too many players walking round the pitch not keeping the shape well enough when we dont have the ball.
