Papers tomorrow.....

[Groke]

You have to admire utd's marketing machine though - they play basic unattractive football, wear a tacky fckin kit, major also rans in all competitions, ugly players, everything about the club is so plastic it makes Lego look organic - yet their money men sell the "brand" to fuck witted foreigners (and fuck witted southerners) en masse. How?

 

[Manx Blue]

Just read this clever piece on ESPN, nice to see someone writing with a bit of common sense instead of the garbage they go on about in the US.

'Man City start to get serious'

Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini is likely to add a few more pieces in defense prior to the start of the Premier League season.
Manuel Pellegrini, as is his way, has been quietly going about Manchester City's preseason business


While the world wonders at 109,000 people turning up for a friendly match, Manchester City's players are making their way quietly back to the European side of the big pond in preparation for the start of the domestic season. In a few months' time it may well come to pass that the attention devoted to Louis van Gaal's grand entrance at rivals United will be seen as the ideal cloak that allowed City to go about their business quietly and successfully.

It is certainly, you get the distinct impression, the way Manuel Pellegrini would prefer to operate.

City's tour of the US culminated in two lively draws (with Liverpool and Olympiakos) and two lost penalty shoot outs. This in itself was not so much of a problem. People will get worked up about preseason as if the results actually matter in the greater scheme of things, but just as people used to say about the latter stages of the FA Cup, nobody remembers the name of the beaten semifinalists. Taken to its logical conclusion, this means that most of us will struggle to remember the opponents in these games let alone the scores in a couple of years' time.

What preseason does for us all, of course, is to whet the appetite. What it does for the club is bring the message to a wider audience. Most importantly, what it does for Pellegrini and his hard working staff is to focus attention on how the team will look and how it will shape up in the opening bouts of sparring when the curtain goes up on 2014-15.

Having started with teams full of youth players and distant reserves, City finished against Olympiakos with many more of the players expected to occupy the positions on the pitch come the big kick off against Newcastle United in less than two weeks' time. The return of the likes of Yaya Toure, David Silva and Joe Hart means City are approaching full strength and Pellegrini can begin to make his considered final decisions on who is ready to start and who is not.

We all have a pretty clear idea of what City's strongest side is, but there may still be room for one or two surprise inclusions before the glorified friendly with Arsenal next weekend. Given the title of the Community Shield, this is where it becomes semi-serious. Although there might still be a little room left for daft penalties and strange hair cuts, we are approaching the border lands between gentle practice and the real thing. This is where Scott Sinclair is thanked for his efforts and put gently back into the cotton wool bed he appeared from and where Micah Richards's whirring left leg is finally wound down and asked to once again perform simple standing duties.

In addition, we will also finally find out for sure whether Eliaquim Mangala was just an impressive image projected on to a Portuguese cliff face or does in fact exist as a viable centre back partner for Vincent Kompany.

City's preseason has been successfully completed. No major injury worries, no fall-outs, plenty of exposure and plenty of good football. The pleasure of seeing a rejuvenated Edin Dzeko and a fully firing Stevan Jovetic has only been slightly tempered by the hiatus over Mangala's arrival and the sudden circus around Frank Lampard's apparently imminent addition to an already well endowed squad.

Things are about to get serious with a London test against Arsenal. Pellegrini's line-up for Wembley will tell us more about what to expect from the early days of the approaching season (who starts alongside Kompany? Fernando or Fernandinho alongside Yaya? Jovetic in up front?) and given last year's sloppy start, we can expect to see a Manchester City side set up to concentrate hard and deliver the goods right from the off.

A good, well-informed article.

Apart from

No major injury worries,

.

Negredo anyone?

Think he means from the American leg of the tour

 

[paulchapo]

You have to admire utd's marketing machine though - they play basic unattractive football, wear a tacky fckin kit, major also rans in all competitions, ugly players, everything about the club is so plastic it makes Lego look organic - yet their money men sell the "brand" to fuck witted foreigners (and fuck witted southerners) en masse. How?

Smoke and mirrors and myth,keep perpetuating the myth,show your greatest moments over and over,call your stadium the 'Theatre of dreams' and get all the media onside to keep singing from the same hymn sheet.Oh and get a player who looks like a bit of a film star and marries a member of one of the top girl groups at the time and create a brand out of them.

When the money and worldwide tv rights came with the formation of the premier league they also had a very successful period culminating in them winning the treble.

 

[Vienna_70]

Just read this clever piece on ESPN, nice to see someone writing with a bit of common sense instead of the garbage they go on about in the US.

'Man City start to get serious'

Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini is likely to add a few more pieces in defense prior to the start of the Premier League season.
Manuel Pellegrini, as is his way, has been quietly going about Manchester City's preseason business


While the world wonders at 109,000 people turning up for a friendly match, Manchester City's players are making their way quietly back to the European side of the big pond in preparation for the start of the domestic season. In a few months' time it may well come to pass that the attention devoted to Louis van Gaal's grand entrance at rivals United will be seen as the ideal cloak that allowed City to go about their business quietly and successfully.

It is certainly, you get the distinct impression, the way Manuel Pellegrini would prefer to operate.

City's tour of the US culminated in two lively draws (with Liverpool and Olympiakos) and two lost penalty shoot outs. This in itself was not so much of a problem. People will get worked up about preseason as if the results actually matter in the greater scheme of things, but just as people used to say about the latter stages of the FA Cup, nobody remembers the name of the beaten semifinalists. Taken to its logical conclusion, this means that most of us will struggle to remember the opponents in these games let alone the scores in a couple of years' time.

What preseason does for us all, of course, is to whet the appetite. What it does for the club is bring the message to a wider audience. Most importantly, what it does for Pellegrini and his hard working staff is to focus attention on how the team will look and how it will shape up in the opening bouts of sparring when the curtain goes up on 2014-15.

Having started with teams full of youth players and distant reserves, City finished against Olympiakos with many more of the players expected to occupy the positions on the pitch come the big kick off against Newcastle United in less than two weeks' time. The return of the likes of Yaya Toure, David Silva and Joe Hart means City are approaching full strength and Pellegrini can begin to make his considered final decisions on who is ready to start and who is not.

We all have a pretty clear idea of what City's strongest side is, but there may still be room for one or two surprise inclusions before the glorified friendly with Arsenal next weekend. Given the title of the Community Shield, this is where it becomes semi-serious. Although there might still be a little room left for daft penalties and strange hair cuts, we are approaching the border lands between gentle practice and the real thing. This is where Scott Sinclair is thanked for his efforts and put gently back into the cotton wool bed he appeared from and where Micah Richards's whirring left leg is finally wound down and asked to once again perform simple standing duties.

In addition, we will also finally find out for sure whether Eliaquim Mangala was just an impressive image projected on to a Portuguese cliff face or does in fact exist as a viable centre back partner for Vincent Kompany.

City's preseason has been successfully completed. No major injury worries, no fall-outs, plenty of exposure and plenty of good football. The pleasure of seeing a rejuvenated Edin Dzeko and a fully firing Stevan Jovetic has only been slightly tempered by the hiatus over Mangala's arrival and the sudden circus around Frank Lampard's apparently imminent addition to an already well endowed squad.

Things are about to get serious with a London test against Arsenal. Pellegrini's line-up for Wembley will tell us more about what to expect from the early days of the approaching season (who starts alongside Kompany? Fernando or Fernandinho alongside Yaya? Jovetic in up front?) and given last year's sloppy start, we can expect to see a Manchester City side set up to concentrate hard and deliver the goods right from the off.

A good, well-informed article.

Apart from

No major injury worries,

.

Negredo anyone?

Think he means from the American leg of the tour

Fair enough.

My mistake.

 

[MaxCityBlue]

I don't think Scott Sinclair will be put back into a cotton wool bed. Bubble wrap maybe but not cotton wool.

 

[paulchapo]

I don't think Scott Sinclair will be put back into a cotton wool bed. Bubble wrap maybe but not cotton wool.

Bloody Helen Flanagan's bed the lucky shit,lol!

 

[stonerblue]

We learned that the whole attack to try and boost our presence in America over the last 4 years has been a complete waste of time!

Liverpool out numbered us 10 to 1 in New York, where we have had a City in the Community scheme running for 3 years, have played on numerous occasions, have set-up a football club for the city with a large advertising budget running adverts 24-7. And this is on the back of us winning the league twice in that time period too.

Liverpool have put zero effort in to building there fan base over there, and have won nothing of note for almost 10 years, yet we are as far behind them as ever. Scary to think just how far behind Utd we must be.

City need to rethink if we ever hope to get big in USA. A major USA based sponsor would probably boost popularity 20% over night, but is that likely with our links to Abu Dhabi? Probably not.

very interesting post

 

[Larry Stranger]

We learned that the whole attack to try and boost our presence in America over the last 4 years has been a complete waste of time!

Liverpool out numbered us 10 to 1 in New York, where we have had a City in the Community scheme running for 3 years, have played on numerous occasions, have set-up a football club for the city with a large advertising budget running adverts 24-7. And this is on the back of us winning the league twice in that time period too.

Liverpool have put zero effort in to building there fan base over there, and have won nothing of note for almost 10 years, yet we are as far behind them as ever. Scary to think just how far behind Utd we must be.

City need to rethink if we ever hope to get big in USA. A major USA based sponsor would probably boost popularity 20% over night, but is that likely with our links to Abu Dhabi? Probably not.

very interesting post

I don't think it's been a complete waste of time. City will never have the huge fan base of United or Liverpool. People are sheep. Americans like teams like the Yankees, Dallas Cowboys, Pittsburg Steelers etc. Teams that have a winning tradition even if they aren't winning at the moment. They think that they will get back to the top eventually. Equally though there are the people who hate those teams and what they are about. This is a way for us to expose ourselves to that fan base. I bet 4 years ago if you asked the average American if they knew who Manchester City was they wouldn't know there even another club in Manchester. Now that we are winning people will take notice and those who hate a team like United or Liverpool will find themselves rooting for us.

If we really wanted to boost popularity in the U.S. or Asia we could just go buy Tim Howard or Shinji Kagawa. But Soriano said in an interview recently that's not what we are about. We will get players that will help us win instead of a popularity purchase. I think only with time and winning over the next 15 or so years will you build up a large following so that's what we should do. Keep winning.

 

[patrickblue]

The fail states "van gaal can claim his firdt.trophy"

That's what they said about Moysie and the Community Shield.

 

[DenisLawBackHeel74]

'Moaning **** Wenger, moans like the bitter moaning **** he is'....meanwhile city to take title and plaudits again


Something like that I think...maybe underdone the **** bit ?