Dribble
Well-Known Member
Dunney Monster is a legend. My reference to him was purely was he any better than Mangala? It's hard to compare because of the different circumstances, but my main point is that when the revolution commenced, Dunne wasn't deemed sufficiently good enough & was jettisoned.I generally agree with your defence of Mangala. Quite a lot of City fans forget that he and Demichelis kept nearly 20 consecutive clean sheets when starting together across 2014 and 2015. He was always nervous and definitely needed to be improved upon when Pep came in, but that last season under Pellegrini was a bad time to be a City centre-back. Kompany was never fit, Demichelis was way past it, Otamendi was a nightmare, so it's no surprise that Mangala suffered too. I think his role in our 17/18 Centurions season is often too easily overlooked as well.
But your Richard Dunne comments are blasphemous. Between 2004 and 2007 when the club was almost always on the brink of being relegated he was the one constant who kept us up over the course of each season. Players like David James, Joey Barton, and Emila Mpenza took the big moments, but there was a reason he scored so many own goals and got so many red cards: he was always in the right place, even if it wasn't always at the right time. I can confidently say that without him and Distin we'd have collapsed into nothing - in 2004, 2006 and 2007 (when we finished 16th, 15th, and 14th) we either had the best defence or the best goal difference in the bottom half, and that was mostly down to Dunney.
Would Mangala have performed in the mid 2000s? Would Dunne have performed under Pellegrini? Both periods were challenging times for us, but just to be clear I was making a comparison between both players.... One considered a legend, the other considered a car crash. That's why I question where this entitled, Raggish attitude of some City fans has come from.