Manuel Pellegrini (cont)

[Marvin]

pellers could fuck bournmouth up.

I'm not Pellegrini's biggest fan but the shit he is getting is way over the top. He has a higher points per game average than Mancini.

BTW Bournemouth are not guaranteed of promotion.

I'm no huge lover of Mancini or indeed a hater of Pellegrini but if you mean comparing their overall average points whilst at City then I think that would be absolutely meaningless. One took over a club that hadn't finished in the top 4 for about 20 years, the other took over a club who had recently won the league and then finished second. I suppose if you compare this season to Mancini's final season then it is arguably a more fair comparison. In which case it is currently pretty much even. Mancini got us to 75 points from 36 games that season prior to being sacked at an average of 2.08 and this season we have an average of 2.07.

ANy a very obvious question, what's the common denominator to those two seasons?

Laregley the same group who had just won the title

And what is the common feature of both seasons? Not turning up in games we should win easily

Conclusion? Look at the Captain who has now been dropped. It's glaringly obvious to me why we have dropped a level. You might ask whether Pellegrini could or should have seen this coming, but the next question s more difficult.....what could he do?

 

[waspish]

Watched the press conference where someone asked him about youth team players being given some game time well doesn't look like they'll be getting any with this manager

 

[noely]

Watched the press conference where someone asked him about youth team players being given some game time well doesn't look like they'll be getting any with this manager

I agree he doesn't seem arsed about giving them a go
I thought when he got the job one of his tasks was to get 1 or 2 youth players each season into the squad

 

[Marvin]

Watched the press conference where someone asked him about youth team players being given some game time well doesn't look like they'll be getting any with this manager

Rightly so. These are not the fixtures to do that. Cup games was the time. If anyone was ready. Don't know much about our younger players other than what's on <a class="postlink" href="http://www.mcfc.co.uk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">www.mcfc.co.uk</a> and from what I have seen the best players have been loaned out. There are quite a lot of our young players playing 1st team football at home and abroad

 

[blueparrot]

Watched the press conference where someone asked him about youth team players being given some game time well doesn't look like they'll be getting any with this manager

Rightly so. These are not the fixtures to do that. Cup games was the time. If anyone was ready. Don't know much about our younger players other than what's on <a class="postlink" href="http://www.mcfc.co.uk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.mcfc.co.uk</a> and from what I have seen the best players have been loaned out. There are quite a lot of our young players playing 1st team football at home and abroad

I've not seen much of some of our younger players but the EDS and u18 were flying in the first half of the season' however as the season has gone on a few of the EDS have gone on loan since then EDS results have dipped. That suggests to me the player like Barker that have moved up are taking a little time to adjust and are not ready to step up to a team still challenging for the league and still in the c/l. A couple of cup games here and there wouldn't have made much difference. The only real way to learn and step up is the path Lopes and Denayer have gone with season long loans.
I don't think anybody will move straight from the EDS to the first team without at least one season away.

 

[decmancity]

Watched the press conference where someone asked him about youth team players being given some game time well doesn't look like they'll be getting any with this manager

I agree he doesn't seem arsed about giving them a go
I thought when he got the job one of his tasks was to get 1 or 2 youth players each season into the squad

Yeah it is, when they are good enough.

I am sure Vieira, Txiki and Pellegrini all work closely together and so will know when is the right time and for what player. Do you think that Pellegrini is just saying no to all of them because he has some kind of agenda?

Besides, we haven't exactly been pulling up tree's this year and so every result is becoming more and more important to him. How many managers will risk youngsters over their more experienced counter-parts?

 

[OB1]

I hate to say this but apart from Silva the players you listed were very much second choice at the time we signed them:-

Aguero was our second choice after Sanchez chose Barcelona over us. Him moving directly to Real was never a realistic option.

Kompany was Vincent Who? when we signed him in terms of the very top teams in the world. We even initially played him in midfield.

Toure was sold to us by Barcelona. Great player that he is he was nowhere near good enough to displace Xavi as their main play maker
and Busquets is a better defensive midfield player.

Where we have done well is retaining all these players.

I agree we are unlikely to change our current strategy in the short term but it could be a minimum of 5 years until we can compete
with Real Madrid on a level footing financially. Will our owner wait that long for European success or will he be pragmatic at some
point? I honestly don't know either way.

You can put them down if you wish but the players I listed are top class players as far as I am concerned and they play for City so we can recruit at a high level. I have acknowledged that there are barriers that mean it is far from easy to do what Real Madrid do but Doertmund proved that you can go to the UCL final by playing attractive football and without spending silly money.

Also, the team do not have go balls out in every game in Europe, they can be pragmatic upon occasion without abandoning the whole strategy. Whether Pellers will show that sort of pragmatism is another question but he has done it elsewhere. What City do not need to do though is go fro a manager who is pragmatism first.

I'm definitely not putting down the players listed : they've all been great for us. I'm merely pointing out that they
weren't top of the European elite's wishlist when we signed them. The elephant in the room is Mourinho. We are now up against a highly
pragmatic manager in the PL as well as in Europe. If Txiki can deliver Pep this Summer or even next Summer fine but if not I'd personally be
tempted to go for Simeone and fuck the strategy.

We will just have to differ here then. I think Aguero was on lots of top club's radars; he certainly should have been because he was being touted as a future world's best from a very young age, which is one reason why I kept an eye on his development and wanted him at City well before he arrived. Yaya was already at an elite club and I have no doubt other top club's were eyeing Silva; again, I am pleased to say he is a player that had caught my eye that City actually went out and bought.

This is all a bit beside the point though: I don't think it matters how exactly players were perceived before they were recruited by City; what matters is having scouts etc that can spot the right players for the system the club wants to employ and, if possible, getting top quality players in before their price has risen to astronomic levels. I firmly believe City could have bought Bale for about £30m or so a year before Madrid bought him and at that sort of price, we should have done. I admit my view of Bale has waxed and waned - other than on the matter of how ugly he is - but this is what I thought in May 2012:

The executive summary is that I’d buy Chiellini, Javi Martinez, Hazard, Bale and Cavani and sell AJ, Dzeko, RSC, Ade, Kolo, Savic, Kolarov, Bridge, Boyata and sundry fringe players. If we could do that, I guess it would be affordable and would probably see us retain the title and have a good UCL campaign plus have an excellent chance of winning a domestic cup.

We missed out on four of those players and it may be the case that we always would have - and I don't now know if the FFP sums would work - but had we acted quickly, bravely decisively and used the full financial might of the club perhaps we could have had a much stronger squad now and one fit for the purpose of our strategy - a strategy that I think worth sticking with but it has to be executed well.

 

[OB1]

When i see Pellegrini interviews on the tv, i don't even listen to them any more, he bores the life out of me. Im saying this as a middle aged man, id hate to think how it must be for a 20 something pro footballer, who has to listen and see his demeanour every single day.

So you think what you see in front of the cameras is what the players see in private and that you know exactly how young footballers need to be dealt with and Pellegrini doesn't?

 

[baildon blue]

Pellergrini eh
I'm still pissed off about last week .
There still 30 points to play for .
But could you see Pellergrini getting the best out of these , players in the next 10 matches .
I hope this weekend Pellergrini as a good study at the up and coming teams we have to play .
Because you can't go gung-ho at somewhere like Anfield .

 

[OB1]

Pellergrini eh
I'm still pissed off about last week .
There still 30 points to play for .
But could you see Pellergrini getting the best out of these , players in the next 10 matches .
I hope this weekend Pellergrini as a good study at the up and coming teams we have to play .
Because you can't go gung-ho at somewhere like Anfield .

I'm still unhappy about last week too.

We would need every one of those 30 points to have a hope of winning the title. I think Pellegrini is capable of setting up and sending out teams that should win each of those games but I have no confidence that there won't be games were the players let us all down and even if they didn't, I cannot believe the match officials won't screw up a game for us.