Long Slow Goodbye
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 25 Mar 2021
- Messages
- 109
- Team supported
- City
Next manager will be inferior. Keep Pep as long as possible. For starters, don't allow stupid fans to rattle him.
What’s the criteria? Inheriting Barcelona 2 years after they’d won a European Cup, with key players from the Spain Euro 2008 team and a Messi who was naturally destined to be the best player in the world? Or winning default titles at Bayern while neutralising them Europe? Or winning a 3 titles in his 5 years here, in each of which he had the best squad in the league?
Where’s the evidence of superiority, that can’t be accredited to circumstance?
He doesn’t have a reference point of overachievement - the true barometer of greatness for a manager - like Ferguson did with Aberdeen or Klopp had with Dortmund and Liverpool.
You'd think he personally dragged the club up from Division 2 and won us our first Premier League title the way some on here deify him.
I think when Pep does leave, my personal opinion is that we need a refresh - and that includes some of the board members.
I’d like us to take a new strategy that involves utilising the abundance of local academy talent that we have right in front of us, in conjunction with the pre-established world class stars we already have in our ranks.
I’d genuinely take a couple of seasons of ‘underperformance’ if it means seeing the likes of Foden, Palmer, McAtee, Harwood-Bellis etc firmly integrated into the team.
Things have gone a bit stale in my view and I find myself getting more disassociated with the club season on season. I’ll obviously always be supporting City come rain or shine, but seeing local lads line up for City week in week will inject so much identity back into the club in my opinion. Seeing Foden develop into this world class star has been one of the biggest positives for me in the past couple of seasons, not spanking dross in the league cup.
I’m personally finding the pursuit of having 20 £50-100m players in the squad quite tedious and also, completely unnecessary at times.
I’m not saying we should stop making big signings, merely saying that we need to find a balance, rather than always chucking more money at the problem, and look at our own in addition to chasing world class talent.
When Pep does leave (and that’s something in no way am I advocating for, but it feels inevitable), I’d like to see Tkixi go with him and Soriano shift into a wider CFG role, with someone stepping in to solely look after City in a CEO capacity. I don’t want our CEO more bothered about opening the 20th club associated with our owner in the arse end of nowhere, I want them completely focused on City.
Change and fresh ideas are healthy and I feel Pep leaving would be the right time for a re-think in strategy. And I feel that time is quite imminent.
Yep. Winning means nothing if it’s inevitable - I’d rather have done it the Leicester way; an owner who wants to invest rather than monopolise, develop our own talent and win one title and cup in 5 years if it was achieved more organically than simply buying £1b of players to neutralise the competition.