Player topic: Eliaquim Mangala (2014/15)

[jrb]

Please!

Nobody is blaming Mangala(or Hart) ;-?

But to fork out £32mill on a centre half and not play him in either of he last 2 matches is madness.

Today was the ideal game to pair him with Kompany once again.

Then again it's only £32mill, and it's obvious doubts remain about him, not only on here, but at the club.

The again, what do I know?

So because he cost a lot of money, we can't rest him, rotate him like all our other players and he's not allowed to ever be injured or tired? You make no sense, you are just scrambling for a reason to criticise someone who obviously had nothing to do with the result.

Oh here we go!

Show me where I criticized him? I'm querying why he didn't play again, and today.

Read what I wrote Mr.............

You don't rest a 23 year old athlete/centre half. :-)(laughs) How much rest in your opinion does he need? 1 week? 2 weeks? 3 weeks? Will he be rested enough for Chelsea next week in your opinion? Is he injured? You tell me as I haven't read any reports saying he is. How much rest did he get playing for Porto? Not much I presume as City thought he was worth spending £32mill on. And just to clarify and to clear up any confusion on your behalf. I was happy City signed Mangala. I rate him. And he has plenty of potential. If he wasn't tired or injured, then today would have been an ideal game to play him alongside Kompany again. Maybe next week, ah, in the daunting cauldron of a pumped up Stamford Bridge, and against Costa & Co?

 

[Newman Noggs]

Like everyone else on here, I don't know whether Mangala is going to make it but what I do know, after today, is that it isn't fair to judge him whilst those around him are playing so poorly. Never mind Boyatta being better than Mangala, both are playing better than Vinnie. We can only wait and see.

 

[Dax777]

So,you'd have been happy going into the season with three centre halves,one of which is becoming more and more injury prone and another is still learning his trade?

And who is this 'next up and coming' centre half who is better than our boy?

Sorry, but with the freezing out of Nastasic, isn't the above exactly what we have right now? An injury prone capt, a solid MDM, and an EM learning Mangala. Exactly what we'd have had, had we not bought him.

As for CB who are up and coming, you have
Emiliano Velasquez at Getafe, 20 fantastic up and coming youngster. Has taken over at cB at 20.
Kalidou Koulibally at Napoli, 23 he is pretty much a Mangala clone with a better passing touch and range.
Juan Jesus at Inter 23, he is a straight up ball skilled no nonsense Brazilian, with a bit of Kompany rash to boot.
Stefan De Vrij at lazio, 22- Good player who's having a great season at Lazio.
Robin Knoche at Wolfsburg, 22 pretty much a calm ball passing CB out of the back.mhaving a good season at Wolfsburg.
Nicklas Sule at Hoffenheim, 19 great ball skills, exceptional for a defender, big fast wide and strong, plays with both feet, and a serious eye for goals.
Not to mention Gimenez at Athletico, 20 and has been dominant and might bench Miranda for good if he keeps this up.

And finally, the guy I suggested we should go get for 7 million if we couldn't resi the urge to buy at an unneeded position, Joel Veltman, yep he too is having an MVP type season for Ajax :(

This would be funny, if it wasn't sad. It was so painfully obvious in the summer :(

 

[Dax777]

Some people right? I'm fucking amazed how easy it is to be clever in here in retrospect! All those players were dubbed to help us out at the time, and was players we needed!
Yet the worst part is peoples obsession with Sanchez, it id amazing sometimes..

feel free to pull up the Mangala threads from the transfer section and check my comments. there is nothing I'm saying now that I didn't say then. I argued Sanchez and Fabregas should be our 2 main targets. I warned that a guy who couldn't oust, Varane, Kolcieny, or even Sahko ( and might have even fallen behind the dude at Barca's) shouldn't be our main target we spend most of our restricted money on. Especially in light of the fact that we didn't even have a weakness at the position. We had Komps, MDM, Nasty, and the Dutch kid. It's not like there was any rush to fill a hole.

None of what I'm saying now is a function of what Mangala has been since he got here. It was simply a function of our circumstances in the summer. We simply were not in need of a CB. I mean if we weren't being restricted, and there was a valuable up and coming CB, sure! But that wasn't the case. We had just won the league, and it was imperative to not repeat the idiotic transfer policy that occurred after our previous title.
Sadly we followed a similar toured logic of making minor improvements to the squad. As opposed to making major improvements to the starting 11.

I can't reme how often I stated most of the Mangala fanboys would be shocked when he finds it hard to bench MDM. And my prediction has pretty much been proven. Too many underrated MDM and thought Mangala was gonna immediately take over. I simplt didn't see it.

This summer was a colossal blunder. Mangala, Fernando, the keeper? All poor de ions. We only had 2 good signings: the free ones.

So you honestly think that you would have been fine with a quartet of: Kompany, Demichelis, Nastasic and Rekik?

Kompany as we know tends to get injured quite easily, Demichelis is 34 years old and probably can't play every game at top level, Nastasic was frozen out as Pellegrini clearly do not rate him, in the current system that we play, and Rekik being so unproven, that it wouldn't make sense to play him at that point?

why does everyone keep saying this? Don't we have exactly that right now? Substitute Mangala for Nastacic, no difference. Boyata is the fourth defender now, would have been also if we didn't buy Mangala. Once we got Mangala, Nasty got frozen out for not leaving to find another club. Had we not gotten EM, Nastasic would have simply played his position.
So what's the difference here?

 

[FantasyIreland]

'whats the difference'?

Well......Just the fact Mangala is better at every aspect of the game,i really don't understand what some of you have been watching.

We have bought a superb athlete with good technical skills and a fantastic attitude - I think the lad is first class and over the next ten years he will hopefully display that.

Why the boss rested/rotated him is anyones guess...... he's just full of surprises.....

 

[raymondkl92]

'whats the difference'?

Well......Just the fact Mangala is better at every aspect of the game,i really don't understand what some of you have been watching.

We have bought a superb athlete with good technical skills and a fantastic attitude - I think the lad is first class and over the next ten years he will hopefully display that.

Why the boss rested/rotated him is anyones guess...... he's just full of surprises.....

Groin injury

 

[FantasyIreland]

Thank you.

 

[Dax777]

He has a big heart and that is a pre requisite of any top class centre half.

Totally agree - also think that he's a thinker which is rare in modern day centre halves. He's been open about his poor moments in a City shirt and has said that he is more critical of his game than anyone else. He will go on to be a world class defender for years to come and this thread will have the comedy value that early threads about Toure/Silva etc had!

Again another one who misses the point. This not about Mangala really, it's about making good decisions. Whether Mangala goes on to be great is not necessarily the issue. The point is we made a choice to splurge a considerable portion of our restricted finances on a player who clearly was not going to start. This is not an indictment on Mangala. I like him a lot and love his heart. However, it was clear MDM and Kompany would be clearly ahead of him. I said as much in the summer. Thus we were inevitable handicapping ourselves by splurging on a player whomwill at best be great in 2 years.

This would be fine in an unrestricted financial season. But this summer was the summer to buy Starters - Sanchez, Fabregas, Di Maria etc. guys who would have brought a dynamic difference to the staring position. The only counter to that point had always been, " well, I e might have lost Mangala." To which I respond, "so what?" It's not as if there wouldn't be other great defensive players we could buy. I listed about 6 young ones above. There are more who have been doing it for a long time. We could have replaced MDM with a vet like Hummels for probably less, the following year. Assuming Nastasic, Rekkik, Denayer all fail to pan out. We simply didn't need Mangala now, and I am certain he'd have been at Porto next year to be bought then anyway.

I mean he held off to see if Chelsea would show interest, but the interest never came. Chelsea already had their young CB, just like we did (Nastacic) and they chose to upgrade their 11. Not their future squad. That is the issue here. Not whether Mangala will come good!

 

[mancity1]

'whats the difference'?

Well......Just the fact Mangala is better at every aspect of the game,i really don't understand what some of you have been watching.

We have bought a superb athlete with good technical skills and a fantastic attitude - I think the lad is first class and over the next ten years he will hopefully display that.

Why the boss rested/rotated him is anyones guess...... he's just full of surprises.....

Hopeful is fine but I would have preferred you left the word out to give more positivity on your assessment of him.

We have invested heavily on him succeeding so if the decreasing reputation our recruitment staff have in the world game for picking winners is to get a jolt in the right direction for a change he had better succeed.

Maybe our slide in playing decent football that has never got off the ground to any extent so far this season is more due to the fact that our players are spending too much time on what they think MP expects of them as opposed to doing what they are capable of.

Either way its not good for MP chances of a third season in charge and things need changing on both fronts and quickly before we lose more ground and the others pass us by.

In saying all that I have never thought are squad is as good as some make it out to be.

Time for the owners to go to the next level starting in the next window.

 

[Dax777]

'whats the difference'?

Well......Just the fact Mangala is better at every aspect of the game,i really don't understand what some of you have been watching.

We have bought a superb athlete with good technical skills and a fantastic attitude - I think the lad is first class and over the next ten years he will hopefully display that.

Why the boss rested/rotated him is anyones guess...... he's just full of surprises.....

again no one is arguing about the next 10 years. That is to be seen. Many made the same claim about Nastacic 2 years ago. The point is we had more pressing need than buying a future CB, who'd proll had been at Porto next summer anyway, as no one else was gonna pa 32 million for his service. So we should have used our restricted funds wisely and spent it on Starters this year.

It wa a dumb decision regardless of how Mangala turns out in future.