I appreciate there have been probably over a few thousand posts on Pellegrini and this season alone, and its not my intention to create another Pellegrini thread but instead use this as an opportunity to reflect on the whole project over the past 7 years in particular, as a way of offering my own thoughts and to hopefully capture some of the key themes which I've read in the hundreds of posts read on here.
It is easy to romanticise about a particular historical moment and to pay nostalgic homage to it especially when the present is somewhat ambiguous. By ambiguous here I mean - some will perceive the defeat to Leicester as the moment the wheels finally came off and the sad reality that Pellegrini has taken 3 years to dismantle the work Mancini did in terms of building a defensive shape which allowed us to control and dominate football matches, in particular at home and in big games, whilst others will point to the fact we are still in 4 competitions and could go back to being 3 or 4 points off top by this time next week.
Ironically, I think that ambiguity has been one of the main ingredients which has subsequently divided fans here in terms of evaluating Pellegrini's era overall. In one sense, he won the double in his first season and then I'm at a League Managers Association dinner watching him inducted into its hall of fame over a year and a half ago for his contribution in doing so. Yet, he effectively won the double with Mancini's squad - and whilst managing it very well (however you want to phrase it - holistically, calmly etc) - it was ultimately Mancini's core group of players, the spine and mentality of having won the FA Cup and League previously regardless of the catastrophic end to Mancini's reign, which played a huge part in staying the distance when Liverpool fell at the final hurdle.
Football is in my opinion full of too many scientists who want to notate everything as a way of producing statistic after statistic which tells us who is likely to be more successful at (a), (b) or (c). I am not old fashioned, but there is something fundamentally intrinsic about trusting the judgement of football fans on the whole, especially those who share the same cultural identity and have lived the last 25 years or the last 7 years (or whatever). Self deception will always exist, but on the whole, I trust that most City fans are attending games at the moment feeling like something has changed - changed in terms of a trajectory which once felt like a rollercoaster of progress, desire and hunger to catch Utd, to be better than them, to rip down banners, and to go toe to toe with them at OT and beat them 6-1. To make a statement to football. (leave Pep to one side for a minute as I felt this long before we announced he had been appointed for July). This change has for sometime felt more stale, more static and at times more regressive than progressive.
Usually, when this sort of stuff is articulated, it inevitably leads to fans to throw up the old days - 'but we were shit, look how bad we were FFS, 2nd division, away days to York, playing in the auto windscreen shield etc', and this is the same nostalgia which masks the reality because all it does it divide based on a perception of who has been here the longest, or who is a greedy bastard as opposed to the self deprecating humility we once identified with when Utd won everything.
Ultimately, this project - since the owner took over, has always been about progress. It has always been about creating the foundations for City to be a sustainable long term successful football club and brand globally. Others document this far better than I can here - but the purpose of my post is to reflect over the past 7 years and to try and characterise how this project has undergone different transformations, whether it be signing Robinho to make a statement, replacing Hughes with Mancini, bringing in Txiki and Soriano, dealing with FFP, establishing partnerships, building the brand in New York, Australia, China, and creating the new academy etc.
In terms of just the football on the pitch however, I think we have seen a change in ambition, hunger, mentality and progression. I fully appreciate the challenges FFP posed, but when Mancini was building that squad, he also established a mentality - a winning mentality. He wasn't perfect, he had flaws, but it took a lot of work to lay that foundation, to win a major trophy, to keep playing until the last kick of the season and overcome the impossible. It felt like we were moving forward upward to a period of dominance. Not forever. Not in some arrogant greedy fashion which meant we forgot how far we had come and from where, but it felt like this was our era. In some ways, you might say it has been. We have certainly had the best squad in the PL for a good few years now, and most fans look to us still as the dominant team who should win the PL. But we haven't dominated. We haven't had one season. One season where we really dominated and made a statement. I fully appreciate the injuries. The nature of them. And to those particular players. But we have still struggled regardless.
In hindsight right now - I think we have missed that opportunity to dominate and watching City this season feels a long way from that sense of progression, hunger, desire to get to the top of the tree. Its sort of like we climbed the mountain but didn't fancy staying on the peak too long. I'm not talking about dominating the league for 10 years or winning 6 or 7 consecutive titles. Football has changed. But the defensive work Mancini did do and the organisation, shape, discipline has absolutely gone. I'm not over simplifying it and saying Pellegrini is a disastrous failure because it is a fine line and it is an ambiguous position we find ourselves - and a week is a long time in football, but that feeling and that judgement is something I think fans come to independent of league tables, or stats of how many games we have lost, or how many goals conceded in comparison to previous years.
The next stage is Pep. And Im fascinated how this will evolve. Because I think and hope, that it becomes the sort of progressive feeling that I and Im sure others felt during those early Mancini years. The context is different. Because we are already established. But I'm trying to remember the last absolute top class player we've signed for a while now bar De Bruyne. And so the next context, will hopefully be Pep taking us onto the next level, the one I thought and hoped we'd have hit before now, but I guess upon reflecting as I write this, we probably weren't ready for it as a football club. I'm hoping we now are. And that he will take some players onto that next level with him, and some new additions who will freshen things up for us (that will include replacing Yaya etc).
But I'm still left with this feeling of regression rather than progression at the moment. And I just don't see the hunger, the desire, the positivity, the cockiness (in a good way), the belief amongst fans on the whole and the players on the pitch in the way I did a few years ago. It feels as though we are losing more games, it feels as though we are more vulnerable on the counter attack, more vulnerable in midfield, have less control, are less disciplined in defence, and these are big areas to address once they set in over a period of time.
