chris85mcfc said:
Mister Appointment said:
Not sure how you come to the conclusion EM can't get in the team. Yes he didn't play against Arsenal which IMO was a mistake on the manager's part, but in terms of a pattern emerging there isn't one. Mangala has played an awful lot of football in recent weeks/months and I'm certain he'll start against Chelsea which IMO is a bigger game than the Arsenal one and a tougher one.
It's a shame we see so much criticism for a young defender - his categorisation as some sort of brainless defensive liability is completely at odds with the performances we have put in in the last two months with him a mainstay in the team. I'm not saying its you who said those things Chris, more a general point on the criticism he receives.
Anyway I'm still sure he'll prove to be a bargain in the years to come.
I've made a few posts in here in the last couple of days, but without actually looking at them, most of my comments have been more along the lines of the fact that we spent so much of our restricted budget on a defender that was on the bench in a big game, while a 35 year old defender was out on the pitch.
The point i was making was, and its in hindsight on my part (although id imagine the club knew what they were paying for in Mangala) if we were going to spend £32 million on someone during a restricted period, then perhaps it should have gone on a player that instantly improves the team, and not someone we are going to have to be patient with.
From what ive seen of Mangala up to now, im not convinced he will turn out to be the top class defender we're hoping for, although im willing to give him some leeway this season as its his first season, and unfortunately defenders of that age tend to make mistakes.
It's really easy to say "should have gone for a player who instantly improves the team" but it's much more difficult to do in practice. Especially at centre half. If I look around at those players who were available and/or who moved last summer I'd say that arguably we got the best centre half on the market. Do I think that Benatia is a better player? No, I don't. Rojo? Nope. The Arsenal sick note that Barcelona signed to solve their problems at the back? Nope. The point is, there isn't a crystal ball you can look into and say "well this guy is definitely going to improve us" because every transfer comes with it's own inherent risk. I think we got the best possible defender we could last summer and I don't think there's another player who moved in that position who you could argue is patently a more successful transfer.
If you want to talk about it more generally (i've just had a look at your posts as well and you seem to be arguing we should've signed Sanchez/Fabregas or someone like that). Well the issue with those players was two fold. Firstly, and this is something which people continually ignore when they talk about transfers, is the wages. Sanchez, Fabregas, (and Di Maria) are all earning in excess of 10 million pounds a year. Which is double the contract that Mangala is on. Part of our FFP restrictions were such that our wage bill could not be increased AT ALL from the 12/13 levels. On that basis I think it was a financial impossibility to bring in a player on that kind of wage/contract without first moving a player on that kind of wage/contract off the wage bill. We were moving on players like Javi Garcia and Alvaro Negredo so the players we brought in needed from a wage perspective to be on similar levels. Next you need to address the issue of playing time. Look at the City squad and then tell me what guarantees that Sanchez plays when Kun's fit? Nothing because Nasri/Silva/Yaya are central to our attacking play and in Pellegrini's 442 Sanchez/Kun wouldn't be the ideal pairing. I can make the same argument for Fabregas and for Di Maria. The reality is that those players all moved to clubs which were prepared to pay them money we weren't, and prepared to guarantee them football and a certain status within the squad which we couldn't because of the quality we already have in those positions.
I think it would've been very different had we sold Dzeko/Nasri, but we didn't we chose to give them new contracts and keep them because they'd just won the title which I think is absolutely right. In that situation with the restrictions we had, better the devil you know than trying to be too cute and offloading players who had just been instrumental in you winning two trophies.
