Manuel Pellegrini

[Bill]

Please expand David.

No please don't David. Nobody is interested in reading another Mancini argument from you two. If you absolutely cannot help yourselves from replying, there's a PM button where you can reply directly to each other

Oi, I'm staying well out of all this, if you notice.

The argument is finished. Dead.

spot on.

both great managers in their own way, just different to each other.
this though is a pelligrini thread and should remain that way.

 

[carlos tevez is a blue]

Can we not bicker?

I like Pellers, comes across well, tactic wise he's no Ferguson, Jose or Mancini but he's kept our players happy and winning so he deserves credit.


A 9.5 out of 10 for me.

Sorry mate but to put Fergiscum in there as a great tactician is wrong.

Great manager no question but he used Kidd, Maclaren and then Queiroz for a reason.

His own tactics were 4-4-2 get it wide quickly and into the box quickly.

There's a reason that in 26 years, with the biggest budget known, he only managed 2 European cups, one won on penalties and the other with 2 goals in injury time against the run of play.

Man management, bullying to get more than each player should be able to give, he was arguably the best, but tactics no chance, you only have to see last seasons capitulation v Madrid after the sending off to see his limitations.

Personnally i'd take pellers over the above, won't bring the club into disrepute and will win us more than enough trophies.

Shame he's not 45-50.

I'll give you Ferguson underachieved in Europe. I'll also give you that lot played a upmarket Pulisball but he was tactically aware, had the know how to move Giggs inside, he dropped Scholes deeper, after winker gate he decided to not only keep fake Ronaldo but build the team around him, picked Park and Fletcher for the big games as they could stop the other teams players dictate the game.

 

[supercity88]

Can we not bicker?

I like Pellers, comes across well, tactic wise he's no Ferguson, Jose or Mancini but he's kept our players happy and winning so he deserves credit.


A 9.5 out of 10 for me.

What a silly argument. Tactically you can look at either of those and claim strengths and weaknesses. You mention the Sunderland game. Well what about the Everton game. At 1-1 and Aguero having a niggle he pushes Yaya forward and brings on Ferny. We score. Martinez tried to react and it allowed us more space. Against Villa - the game a nervous one and one of patience. He puts Jovetic on to increase creativity and we score.

Ferguson... you mention elsewhere his use of Park and Fletcher despite their limited talent. Well he should have replaced them. Then he would have been a better manager. He used them against Barca in the CL. They lost. He used a defensive side against us in the 2012 title derby and it cost them the league as we dominated the game.

Mourinho. The tactical nouse that led to Azpilicueta playing in the no.10 role in the game at Atletico. That they lost. The nouse that led to them losing to Villa. Palace. Sunderland.

Mancini. The man who tried so hard to get a win in the CL and the monkey off his back, he resorted to some ridiculous formation that none of the players were comfortable with, and we got outclassed by Ajax. Interesting that he didn't use that system much, despite being peeved by Richards' comments that it was confusing the players. Look at their win percentages - you'll see they are all decent managers. Sometimes you have to be patient. Football is not always a scientific process. You can lose despite dominating a game. That doesn't mean you have to throw Lescott on as a centre forward at 0-0. We have shown patience in games and in others Pellegrini has altered things. At Anfield he made the change and coinciding with Yaya's injury we got back into the game. That is a manager who knows his team and knows what he wants from them. One that has faith that they can win things. They have.

 

[adrianr]

In what world is Mancini further ahead of Pellegrini and on par with Mourinho and Fergie?

He's not, those 2 are arguably the 2 best managers of all time.

Some of you are like twitter parody accounts, sincerely.

Please expand David.

Very unfair that chap. The main thing you can level at him from a tactical point of view this season is an insistence, though this could be argued perhaps little more than a belief in the players, to carry out a certain system, and that was something we had to commit too sooner or later anyway. He's certainly more tactically astute in an attacking sense than all managers you've mentioned.

Does Pellergrini change his tactics to snuff out the opposition? Sunderland away is the best example when he swapped Dzeko for Negredo(it may have been vice versa but the point stands) would he take a right back off to bring a striker on? Mancini wasn't afraid to take a player off before half time, neither was Mourinho, Ferguson knew that whilst Park and Fletcher weren't the most talented he could rely on them for the bigger games and sadly it worked. Not saying we should sack him and I rated him very highly as you have seen by my 9.5 out of 10 mark. What Pele does have over Mancini is man management skills, there's been significant improvements in Nasri, Dzeko, Garcia, Kolarov. Mancini's the ruthless win at all costs it's my way or the highway bloke, Pellers is the we'll win and we'll win in style keep the squad happy bloke.

Clichy and Kolarov against Barca would be a parallel to draw with Park and Fletcher, though I don't see it as tactical mastery. We were going to be up against a formidable attacking force and they're two defensively minded players on the wing we often have fairly exposed. Playing more defensive players in the hope of a good counter attack is typically a tactic reserved for when you're not good enough to stand toe to toe with the opposition - Pellegrini's and indeed the clubs entire remit is to get us to a level where, like Barcelona at their best, every opposition will have to tailor their tactics to counter us, not the other way around.

This tactical argument is all too often distilled on here to essentially stopping with 2 midfielders and playing 3 instead (Not saying that's what you're doing). Ferguson was no tactician, they had a simple system and a large group of players very well drilled in it, allowing for minimal fall off in performance swapping out multiple players.

Likewise Mourinho's 'tactical genius', in games like Anfield - 5 at the back, 3 man shield in front. He did this because he knew trying to play Liverpool at their game would be suicide and they would have been 3-0 down in the first 20 minutes. However, when you are good enough to play Liverpool at their game, which we are (and will only get better at), you have to believe the players can go out there and simply do it better. Sometimes they won't, and they will fail as a result, but it's not tactical naivety.

At the end of the day each team can only field 11 players. If you're doubling up somewhere you're a man down elsewhere, it's simple maths. Going by the goals scored/conceded columns, Pellegrini has managed this balance better than anyone else, but ultimately top managers just aren't separated by as much as distance as some would have you believe. Perhaps a naive belief, but even in those games we were clearly getting over run, Pellegrini wasn't oblivious too it, he's not an idiot, I just think he genuinely thought we had the talent out there to make the system work. Yes he could have dropped someone in the midfield against Bayern, but maybe he preferred the idea of their centre halves having to deal with 2 strikers instead of one? Maybe he felt Fernandinho and Yaya had it in them to eventually overcome Bayern in the middle without help? It's never black and white. That's about the only thing I could level at Pellegrini this season from a tactical point of view, too much belief in the ability of some of our players.

 

[Anonymous]

The extent of Mourinho's tactical genius has always been to play the %'s, know when to park the bus, and generally with the best players available win more than the teams around him.

Obviously the guy's a winner and his trophy record is superb, but the performances against Liverpool and At Madrid crystallised for me when I'd never want a manager like that running our club and why I'm delighted we have gone the "Barca" way even if it means winning less (which so far doesn't seem to be the case).

 

[forevermancity]

Hopefully this will be the last we hear of RM (apart from his thread of followers in general football).

The future is blue, the future is pellegrini

 

[cityok]

a parquet floor,
a parquet floor,
Manuel Pellegrini,
likes a parquet floor.

 

[Vincents Tackle]

Mancini a better tactician than Pellegrini?

Interesting.....not an opinion I share

Pellegrini took time to adapt to a new league in a new country with new players that had issues from the previous season and needed to understand a totally different playing philosophy under the new man.

I think we'll be even stronger next season now he's had a full year under his belt.

 

[kinkyafro66]

He kept his head whan all about him were losing theirs... this gave me confidence, even when almost everyone were saying Liverpool would win it.

 

[Graffin]

Manchester City’s Coach: Honest, Charming and Winning With Style
By ROB HUGHESMAY 11, 2014

A gentleman coach arrived in England last year, and it is fair to say that the English media still do not quite know what to make of him. That in part is because the Chilean Manuel Pellegrini does not play the modern media game.

He has no time for spats with other coaches on the sidelines. He is what used to be called a player’s manager.

But as rain fell heavily upon Manchester last week, a banner in the crowd paid tribute to City’s quiet coach. “This Charming Man” it read, a reference to a 30-year-old song by the rock band The Smiths, who hailed from Manchester.

This man Pellegrini is an educated outsider, having studied civil engineering while he was still playing in Chile. However, the charm now is in his math: City has scored 102 goals in the league season, and its overall total of 154 goals in 56 games in all competitions under Pellegrini surpasses the 143 total of Manchester United’s famous Busby Babes in 1957-58.

“There are different ways to win titles,” the coach said at his news conference before City clinched the title by outclassing West Ham United, 2-0, on Sunday. “I choose this one, with attractive football. We have a style of play. We are always thinking to score goals. That, to me, has the same importance as winning the title.”

Photo
A banner paid tribute to City’s Manuel Pellegrini last Wednesday. It read “This Charming Man”, a reference to a song by the rock band The Smiths. Credit Jon Super/Associated Press
It is not simply scoring. Something has happened this season to transform the top of England’s Premier League from a place of caution and fear of defeat. Five of the top six teams — City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Everton, Tottenham — have attacked, and the only exception has been Chelsea.

The Chelsea coach, José Mourinho, has turned from his own description, “The Special One,” into The Sour One. He will on Monday present his employer, Roman Abramovich, with a detailed dossier on where things went wrong, and what it might cost to join the in-crowd of clubs now seemingly embarked upon winning, with style.

Pellegrini, though, will talk only about his players.

He inherited the bulk of the City squad from Roberto Mancini, the Italian who was fired last May. Mancini had won the English title the season before, but his moody personality had wrought division within the camp.

Pellegrini soothed the factions. David Silva, the Spanish creator whom the City fans call “El Mago,” the Magician, spoke on the club website this weekend of Pellegrini’s bringing “joy” and “freedom to express” talents within the team.

“If you are edgy out on the field,” Silva said, “that’s when things don’t work so well.”

Yaya Touré, the team’s midfield colossus, did not have to speak. His goal a week ago, when he sprinted 60 yards with the ball and outran player after Aston Villa player, was the embodiment of a freedom that most of us last saw on the playground.

Yet there were adjustments, sacrifices to be made. Vincent Kompany, the team’s Belgian captain, has spoken of the risks taken when six or seven of the players are encouraged by the coach to go forward seeking goals. The keeper, Joe Hart, had remained largely silent when Pellegrini took him out of the lineup for more than a month, shielding the England goalie from a worrisome period of lost confidence, while giving his understudy the chance that every No. 2 works for.

The key, say the players, is that the coach is honest at all times in his explanations of his decisions. Honest, calm, and not distracted by anything from the outside.

Pellegrini has been taunted by other managers. He made one uncharacteristic public slip when he blamed a Swedish referee for his team’s failure in the Champions League. And being an honest man, Pellegrini publicly made an apology about an hour later.

If we look back, we see the strength of character that this Chilean coach showed even before he was handed the richest collection of players in an English team. Players, incidentally, who are predominantly not English at all, outside of Hart and the industrious substitute James Milner.

Pellegrini’s credo, though, was there to see a decade ago when he coached, and coaxed, a little-known Villarreal side to third place in Spain. His always pleasing Villarreal team was affectionately known as “the yellow submarine.” It was easy on the eye, and it reached the semifinals of the Champions League.

During that time, the charming man that was Pellegrini mused that he had been “a dog” as a player, but he had changed.

It is a curious trait of the managers. Quite often those who were negative as players turn out to be coaches who seek to liberate the attacking qualities in players they manage. A dull, defensive player turns into a bright, creative coach.

“It was a pleasure to work with him,” Samir Nasri said Sunday. “Everybody put his ego to one side.”

As it happens, West Ham United, City’s final opponent of the season, once had such a manager. Ron Greenwood was a quite limited central defender as a player, but he built an ethos of open, stylish performances that ran through the teams he coached for West Ham.

Indeed, to this day, the Hammers fans will not accept anything as pragmatic as that of the current squad. Its coach, Sam Allardyce, is therefore under pressure to keep his job even though the first task of a manager at West Ham’s level is to keep the team in the Premier league.

Allardyce did that. The players at his disposal were nothing like the caliber of those brought to City’s Etihad Stadium — Kompany, Touré, Silva, Sergio Agüero, Edin Dzeko — and they cost nothing like them, either.

From here, City’s path is open to question. The Abu Dhabi rulers who have spent lavishly to raise the club now crave Champions League success. But UEFA, the governing body of Europe, is expected to impose a fine of 50 million pounds, or about $84 million, along with other penalties on City for spending beyond its soccer-related income.

Pellegrini may have to manage on less next season but is unlikely to change his style. This Charming Man, indeed.


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/12/s...est-charming-and-winning-with-style.html?_r=0