Manuel Pellegrini

Lavinda Past said:
As a 'stop gap' manager, he was bloody good.

Great football, lots of goals, trophies... I doubt anyone could have achieved more with City at the time. Yes, he inherited Bobby's squad, but he added to, and improved it.

2013/14 was probably my favourite season ever, a proper title race, fighting to the end, and Yaya Toure giving the best 'season long' performances I've seen by any City player.

As we know, it went down hill a bit in 2014/15 but only a complete idiot would dismiss 2nd place as a 'failure'.

2015/16 was obviously disrupted by everyone knowing that Pep was on his way to City and Manuel Pellegrini would be leaving. A clearly 'unsatisfactory' season for many City fans... 4th in the PL, League Cup winners, and a CL semi-final.

Not exactly a disaster, but most City fans' heads had already been turned to Pep and the future... As far as most of us were concerned, Manuel Pellegini would not be missed, and he was disrespected by thousands of supporters on his final day.

How fickle we football fans can be sometimes!

Manuel is a lovely, approachable bloke. A real gentleman who, with hindsight, deserves to be remembered fondly by everyone connected with City. For me, 2013/14 will always be the Yaya and Manuel season - The most entertaining season I've seen since the 'swashbuckling' days of Joe and Malcolm at their peak.
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We’ve had two other title races go to the final day. Yaya was class that season. Silva had many more consistent seasons than him though.
15/16 season is just an excuse. We found out what in the January time about pep. That point we wasn’t in a title race, also when Bayern announced pep mid season he will be their next manager the following year they won the treble. Easy excuse to justify failure.
 
Bluesince88 said:
Average at best. That champions league semi final away leg in Madrid was fucking dreadful and sadly left a bitter taste in my mouth. He was the calm character they wanted in after Mancini and he fulfilled that role.
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The champions league semi final that we didn’t get to again for several years and many hundreds of millions of pounds spent?
Yeah, it was dreadful.

Without the job Pellers did Pep wouldn’t have touched us with a barge pole.

We owe the fucking corpse more than we can ever repay.
 
Brilliant first season but we were getting progressively worse under Pellers and I thought we’d become the most unfit team in the Prem (with the same trend happening at West Ham when he was there n’all).

For that brilliant first season he should always be remembered fondly (Yaya is still the pinnacle for any City performer we’ve had). But we got rid of Pellers at exactly the right time.
 
Pellegrini did not come to City at the easiest of times. Mancini had breathed new life into the sleepiest of sleeping giants but we'd lost to Wigan in the final and there were fairly well substantiated stories of serious divisions in the club and of imminent transfer requests. I was adamantly opposed to sacking Mancini and bringing in Pellegrini. The season got off to a cracking start when we thumped Newcastle at home but our away form was dire and by November we were 10th in the table and in CL we'd been given a real lesson at home by Pep and his Bayern side. Things rapidly improved and his handling of the squad and selection in the run in to the title was quite masterful. He ended the season with a double - the second in the club's history and the first since the legendary days of Joe and Mal.

Things were never as good again and all went rather stale in what proved to be his final season. The first thing I would say is that he never really got his feet under the table. It was clear the club craved Pep and Pellers was told that if/when he became available the club would appoint him, so working under those conditions was never going to be easy and he was never going to build his ow team and so from that viewpoint I think he did really well, though even before he told a startled presser that he would not be at the club next season and the club announced that Pep would, there was a stale fin de regime atmosphere. Players had clearly been brought in during the summer with another manager in mind, Pep had announced he was leaving Bayern and then City announced he was coming here so that everyone focused on the future and the season petered out eventually, with City qualifying for the preliminary round of the CL.

I came to respect Pellers rather than like him. His calm dignity and soothing style were probably necessary after the wonderfully abrasive Mancini years and he won three trophies in three years, which isn't half bad. All in all pretty excellent for someone who never had any idea how long he was going to be here.
 
Bluesince88 said:
We’ve had two other title races go to the final day. Yaya was class that season. Silva had many more consistent seasons than him though.
15/16 season is just an excuse. We found out what in the January time about pep. That point we wasn’t in a title race, also when Bayern announced pep mid season he will be their next manager the following year they won the treble. Easy excuse to justify failure.
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All about opinions. In my opinion, 2013/14 was my favourite ever season, 2013-14 Yaya Toure was the best player I've ever seen at City, with Colin Bell and Carlos Tevez not far behind. David Silva was without doubt the most consistent player I've ever seen in a City shirt over many seasons.

If you honestly think 2015/16 was a failure, you've clearly been spoiled by success and lost touch with the reality of supporting a football club.
 
Psychedelic Casual said:
Brilliant first season but we were getting progressively worse under Pellers and I thought we’d become the most unfit team in the Prem (with the same trend happening at West Ham when he was there n’all).

For that brilliant first season he should always be remembered fondly (Yaya is still the pinnacle for any City performer we’ve had). But we got rid of Pellers at exactly the right time.
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Very fair comment mate.

I know for a fact that a few senior players were taking the piss / put their feet up very quickly after the Pep announcement was made. They've all since been moved on of course. A couple took longer than others.
 
Whatever else he was, he was a gentleman in both senses of the word. He went with dignity. He knew that he was holding the job open for Pep, he came in after Mancini had blotted his copy book and he has never complained.
Granted not the best manager in the world but I liked him and respected him. I was at his very last match in charge away at Swansea. He came over to applaud the fans with the players and turned to go as some of the players were giving shirts to the fans. Ya Ya grabbed him and pulled him back and was persuading him to take his jacket off and give to one of the fans! I still hope that he took all personal items out of the pockets before he passed it over!! :-)

A very nice man. And when he came back with West Ham and was standing in his technical area I shouted. 'Welcome back' and he turned and acknowledged my shout. (Don't think he knew who it was just acknowledging the gesture.) The only opposition manager I would have let step outside their technical area without a shout!! Unfortunately :-) he stayed inside the area!!
 
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