Shaelumstash said:
Firstly, he seems to have no faith in youth, certainly not our youth players, as he consistently fails to give them an opportunity. Particularly in the early rounds of cup competitions / dead rubbers when we have managed to get some of our most important players injured over the last two seasons. Surely giving youth players an opportunity is a closer analogy to saving up and buying your own car, and blindly playing Fernando no matter how horrific he is just because daddy has paid good money for him is the reverse?
This is contradictory. You pillor him for "not having faith in youth" despite all of the decent ones actually been out on loan, then pillor him again for having faith in a proven professional who has played 250 games at the highest levels and won 4 league titles in Portugal. You want him to play unproven players with obviously less talent than Fernando instead of having faith in Fernando for no clear reason that I can see.
I pillor him for having no faith in youth for games like Sheffield Wednesday at home when we win 7-0, probably a good opportunity to give some kids a go. If he wanted to give the kids a go, they wouldn't all be out on loan would they? They're out on loan because the manager didn't want them to be part of the first team squad.
The clear reason for questioning his faith in Fernando is that despite his highly decorated career in Portugal, he is now playing in a completely different system, in a completely different standard of competition, and he has been consistently dreadful. He still gets picked ahead of Fernandinho who won the Premier League last year playing in our team. Strange that you applaud Pellegrini's "faith" in Fernando while blindly accepting his lack of it in Fernandinho.
Whether the manager has been Brian Horton, Alan Ball, Frank Clarke, Kevin Keegan, Hughesless, Mancini or Pellegrini, the only thing City fans expect is that the manager gets the most out of the players / squad at his disposal, that has never changed. If the squad of players is shite, and they play shite, no one vilified the manager, it's when the manager underachieves that there have always been dissenting voices.
Look at Alan Ball, an absolute disaster of a manager. With the squad of players we had on the day he arrived, there is no way we should have been as diabolical as we were that season. That's why he is remembered as the worst manager we ever had, not for the fact we got relegated. Joe Royle got us relegated, but he was never looked at with the same contempt, because he did the best with what he had, the players were simply not good enough to stay up.
Hughes is another good example, the opportunity he had with the money he had to spend, the pathetic and naive football we were playing, it was clear he was not the man to move us forward. The fans gave him time, until it was obvious he was holding us back. Mancini came in and instantly made us much harder to beat and was setting the team up in a way that suited the players. He wasn't playing SWP in central midfield for a start! He was getting more out of the players than the previous guy, so he was well liked by the fans.
The perennial Barnum statement, the number one excuse football fans use to have a dig - "
they aren't getting the best out of the squad". This applies to any manager in any team in the entire world because it sounds like it means something until you think about it for a while then it actually means nothing. Guardiola was leveled with this at Barca to show you how applicable it can be made to people.
By "
he isn't getting the best out of the squad", what you really mean to say is "
some players aren't playing to their best" or to put it another way "
some players are out of form".
So your problem with the manager is that some players are out of form recently and somehow this is now something that is a sackable offence. You can dress it up in fluffy language as much as you want but this is your core problem.
Please don't be so naive to think you can try to tell me why I really mean. I know full well what I really mean. If you do not understand it, that is your issue, but do not attempt to skew my point, I am quite capable of thinking for myself.
Not getting the best out of the squad does not mean that "some players are out of form" as you suggest. That could be a part of it, but there are certainly wider issues than that. As I alluded to earlier, playing Fernando in a 442 isn't getting the bast out of the squad. Nothing to do with form, he's just not suited to playing that way. Cardiff last year, playing Lescott and Garcia in a high defensive line despite them both being slower than my granny, not "players out of form", rather the manager having a fundamental inability to accept different players have different attributes, and not all are suitable to play in the same system.
Going to West Ham away and getting completely outnumbered and overran in midfield and sitting on your hands and doing absolutely nothing about it. Players out of form yes, but the manager should have looked to change it instead of hoping the player would suddenly break in to form at some point in the second half.
Examples from previous managers, Mark Hughes playing SWP in central midfield in a 433, nothing to do with form, but to do with playing players in positions that don't suit them as they don't have the attributes to play there. Peter Reid picking Adrian Heath over Clive Allen, nothing to do with form, to do with favouritism.
There are countless examples of where managers "didn't get the best out of the squad" for a whole variety of reasons other than players being out of form.
But as you seem so certain this is the only possible explanation, what are the reasons for so many players being out of form? Lack of fitness? Lack of confidence? Lack of happiness? Disunity in the squad? Whatever the reason, if a significant number of players are out of form, the buck stops with the manager.
Pellegrini has the finest squad ever assembled at Manchester City at his disposal, there's no doubt about that.
I doubt that. I doubt it very strongly, I think our title winning squad of 11/12 was a better and more rounded squad than this one.
Ok, well for arguments sake, let's say it's the 2nd best squad in the history of the club if that makes you feel better. If you looked at the squads of every team last year and you had to rank the quality, where would you have ranked our squad in relation to the rest of the league? Personally, I would have ranked it 1, easily. Therefore, the squad winning the league is par for the course. It's still a great achievement to win the league, but let's not kid ourselves that winning the league last year was some kind of managerial masterclass. He won the league with the best set of players in the league. Par.
So of course he is expected to achieve a great deal with these players. I read someone earlier say that if we finish top 6 but not top 4 this season, it couldn't be considered a disaster. I What they expect is that the manager will get the very best out of the squad he has available. Whether that be by keeping their confidence sky high (early Keegan years) or being tactically astute (Mancini years) City fans love a manager that helps the squad achieve or over-achieve it's potential.
Funny that because both of them had the idea of "not being able to get the best out of the squad" leveled at them too. Mancini for not getting the best out of Nasri, Johnson, Silva, and Tevez. Keegan for Bernabia and Berkovic team after a purple patch where they both hit form and people now thought that this was their "default level of talent" that should be getting reached every week. Oh and of course there's McManaman, David James and a bunch of others who were seen as underachieving at the time.
And they both left their jobs at that point didn't they?
The early part of last season, and the early part of this, even his most ardent fan couldn't accuse Pellegrini of getting the most out of this squad of players. From December onwards last season he got the team playing extremely well, and deserves credit for that. But let's not be naive, winning the league last year with that squad of players was par.
Total bullshit. Winning the league is NEVER just "a par". This is the exact attitude that I was decrying; those who brush off league titles as expected and not really an achievement.
Winning the league is NEVER just par? So if Celtic win the league this year, that is not par? Gary Neville said himself when Ferguson was at The Shite, winning the league was par. It was expected. They usually had the biggest budget, the best players and the best manager so winning the league was par. That's not to say it wasn't a good achievement, of course it was. If they finished 8th in 2001, you'd say that was under par wouldn't you? Winning the treble in 99 was probably over par, so why couldn't you say winning the league in 2000 was par?
All par means is that you are achieving what could be reasonable expected with the resources at your disposal. If you achieve less than what could be reasonable expected, you are performing under par, over achieving, over par. WIth our squad last year, winning the league could be reasonably expected. Par.
I don't expect miracles from him, but I certainly don't expect a City manager in 2014 to be tactically outclassed by Sam Alladyce either. One off games are blips that can be forgotten about, but we have been nothing short of diabolical since the second half of the first Moscow game. That's 4 and a half games on the spin, which is alarming for a squad of our quality. This isn't temporary either, our form even before Moscow was patchy at best.
Yet again you're confirming that your problem is that we haven'#t played well for 4 and a half games and yet again you've dressed it up in the meaningless statement of "not getting the best out of the squad".
Again, you are trying to put words in my mouth. If you want to engage in a debate with me, please discuss the things I've said, and not the things you wish I'd said. "Our form even before Moscow was patchy at best" You even quoted it, so I am unsure why you did not read it. Our form this season has gone from "patchy at best" to "diabolical". That isn't about not playing well for 4 and half games only, that's about us starting off fairly badly, and getting worse.
Questioning the manager is not a result of a feeling of entitlement to win every single trophy. It's from a feeling that City fans have always supported a manager who gets the most out of his squad, and questions managers who do not. We don't blindly support a manager who we feel is holding back the squad from achieving it's potential. Pellegrini is close to emulating Mark Hughes in that respect.
City fans pick and choose which managers like based on arbitrary things in my opinion that have little to do with their football. A certain section of the forum hated Mancini no matter what he did. A certain section now hate Pellegrini no matter what he does. A certain section will turn on anybody, including Joe Royle, after we have been on a bad run of form. You're also crazy if you think Royle didn't get stick for getting us relegated, he got a huge amount of stick for it from all quarters and him getting us relegated from the PL despite putting us there from Division Two got him the sack. And do you know what fans said?
He wasn't getting the best out of the squad
You think fans pick and choose what they like based on arbitrary things that have little to do with football? I'd be really interested to learn what kind of things you think they are? Perhaps fans didn't like Alan Ball because of his flat cap and squeaky voice, as opposed to him thinking Kit Symons was a better player than Keith Curle and getting us relegated with a squad full of promising young players. Perhaps fans loved Mancini for his terrific hair and scarf and not because he improved us immeasurably and brought some of the best players in our history to the club and won our first trophies in 40 odd years?
But where your point really falls down it with Pellegrini. He's just about the most likeable City manager I can ever remember. He seems to be an absolutely lovely guy, very warm and friendly, courteous, educated, intelligent man. There is literally nothing arbitrary that I can think as a reason not to like him or wish him to do well. Other than his tactical incompetence as a football manager.
I think you are quite wrong to criticise people for not turning up to the Roma game. I was lucky enough to be able to afford a ticket, but criticising those who couldn't is rather crass.
I'm not criticising those who couldn't afford a ticket, I'm criticising those who could and would have gone to a Division Two Playoff Final but have somehow lost their motivation in the most important club competition in the world in a game we desperately needed to win.
