Samir Nasri interview

[PPT]

Dave in all fairness after a FA cup and Prem title did the majority of fans give a flying f**k.
Chappie came to Failsworth branch a few years after those 2 nice pots and the hate he had for Mancini was an eye opener at the time .

Chappie the village idiot who sold stories about City and the players to the tabloids when he was working with them on a daily basis. You can’t get much lower than that.

 

[PPT]

I agree with you that Pellers was at least the equal of Mancini as a manager and easily arguably better. Certainly he was a calmer individual and laid the foundations for Pep perfectly. A true gent.

But when you say that Mancini should have won the league more easily in 2012 I have to vehemently disagree.
He was in charge of a group of players who had only very recently been brought together. At a club that hadn’t been near a title in 44 years, bar a near miss in 1977. And his main adversary was a club that had proven itself over decades as the most successful English side ever. A club managed by, frankly, a living legend and the greatest manager in the history of club football. A club and a manager that had successfully and publicly seen off every single challenger over the previous 20-odd years.
And at City he had a team that were at war with their manager because he made them work hard and didn’t always treat them like Gods, and a minority of a fan base that openly despised and hated him as they refused to forgive him for winning our first trophy in 35 years, the season before.

The job Mancini did in 2012 was as near to a miracle as you’ll likely ever see.
Not to forget the disgraceful run of decisions we got from officials from
Christmas until mid April.

Pep is a far far better manager than Mancini and I wouldn’t swap him for the world on a plate, but Mancini did a vastly more impressive job given the resources open to him and the circumstances both found themselves in.

Mancini is simply a God. Without him there’s no pellers and ultimately no Pep. Without him this City which we all love would not exist in its current form.

Top post. Any true City fan cannot hate or despise Mancini.

 

[wayne71]

Mancini was the best manager I'd ever seen manage us at that point. Shut the rags up, told ferguson to get fucked and put a smile on my face monday morning going into work.

I honestly couldn't give a flying if he upset chappie and a few others along the way. We needed that kick up the arse at that point in our development.

 

[Gingers Dad]

I agree with you that Pellers was at least the equal of Mancini as a manager and easily arguably better. Certainly he was a calmer individual and laid the foundations for Pep perfectly. A true gent.

But when you say that Mancini should have won the league more easily in 2012 I have to vehemently disagree.
He was in charge of a group of players who had only very recently been brought together. At a club that hadn’t been near a title in 44 years, bar a near miss in 1977. And his main adversary was a club that had proven itself over decades as the most successful English side ever. A club managed by, frankly, a living legend and the greatest manager in the history of club football. A club and a manager that had successfully and publicly seen off every single challenger over the previous 20-odd years.
And at City he had a team that were at war with their manager because he made them work hard and didn’t always treat them like Gods, and a minority of a fan base that openly despised and hated him as they refused to forgive him for winning our first trophy in 35 years, the season before.

The job Mancini did in 2012 was as near to a miracle as you’ll likely ever see.
Not to forget the disgraceful run of decisions we got from officials from
Christmas until mid April.

Pep is a far far better manager than Mancini and I wouldn’t swap him for the world on a plate, but Mancini did a vastly more impressive job given the resources open to him and the circumstances both found themselves in.

Mancini is simply a God. Without him there’s no pellers and ultimately no Pep. Without him this City which we all love would not exist in its current form.

Pellers seems like a nice bloke and he did win the league. He's not a patch on Mancini as a manager. If Pellegrini had taken over from Hughes I highly doubt he would have turned into champions in 18 months. I was so glad when he left, he was turning us into Wengers Arsenal in half the the time it took Wenger

 

[1961_vintage]

OK but we still won 2 titles with him in the side. Still don't get the hate.

I don't hate him at all. I loved him as a player when he was on it (as he often was) and, having been behind the goal when he scored at Wembley vs Sunderland, he game me one of my great memories of that time. But that doesn't prevent me for seeing his character flaws. He was a lad that played for City, not some sanctified deity.

 

[Didsbury Dave]

I quite liked Nasri and I tend to think the accusations of being a mercenary or lazy are more about assumptions of his character than anything that happened on the pitch.

There’s nothing in this interview which contradicts what’s already been aired about Mancini’s time at City. Wearing a scarf and ‘tearing the banner down’ just struck me as good PR, but the other side of the coin was an ongoing sense of drama and instability which did nothing for performances on the pitch. With the squad we had we should have won the league by far more than goal difference in 2012 and it was Mancini’s intransigence which resulted in Van Persie going to the rags which pretty much cost us the league the following seasons. Tevez being unavailable for much of the 11/12 season because Mancini invented a fictional version of events in Munich was ia sackable offence.

Mancini’s biggest flaw was that he thought he was bigger than the club and could play political games, negotiate with alternative employers, dictate transfer strategy, demand signings on a plate and drive players out of the door without any of it coming back to him. Without getting in to national stereotypes, perhaps he did think City would cheat there way through FFP so he could have five centre forwards, Hazard, AND De Rossi without having to sell anyone despite it being obvious to all and sundry that this was not going to happen.

Prior to joining City Mancini’s record in club management was good but not great and the same could be said for his post City club career. Managing City was the peak of his career but he never realised what he had and let it slip away. Ironically, perhaps the same could be said about Nasri?

As an aside, it's been said that Mancini didn’t do much in the way of team talks and it was usually Kompany who got things organised in the dressing room. One of Mancini’s main weaknesses was that he was quite tactically limited which was very apparent in Europe and on any occasion we played a side using 3,5,2 – the FA Cup final being a prime example.

What I struggle to understand is the masturbatory reverence in which Mancini is still held by people who treat Pellegrini with equal levels of disdain. They won similar amounts but the main difference is that Pellegrini did so under the constraints of FFP and with much better performances in the Champions League.

Mancini did get some big things right - facing down the egos in the squad, putting the pressure back on the rags in 11/12 title race and also taking the heat for the 3-0 defeat at Anfield the Monday before the FA Cup semi-final. However, overall, only achieved the minimum of what he should and by the end of 12/13 had, arguably, set us back.

That’s a very good post.

 

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

The problem with most of the posts on this thread is that there's a huge emotional investment in them which cranks the rhetoric up to implausible levels at which they overstate their case.
I see that the question of Roberto is still an extremely touchy one.
I never felt the liking for Pellegrini — or even Pep, who is miles superior to either of his predecessors — that I felt for Mancini but hey, that's me. He stood up to Ferguson, and yeah, that was fine, we all liked it, but you know, it was handbags at ten paces really. (And if he hadn't “torn the banner down”, it would have been done sooner rather than later, because the whole movement of the club was towards success and establishing the upper hand over a declining rags outfit, presided over by an ageing despot.)
Who hates or despises Mancini? Seriously? I'm having difficulty seeing any post here or elsewhere that even implies it. By the same token, who seriously elevates Samir Nasri to anything more than what he was — a highly talented footballer, who certainly didn't realise his potential with us (and even less after us), but who played some superb football for us along the way and helped us, along with all the others, win two titles.
For me the interview is important not so much in what it says about City and his time there, but I can't personally think of an interview I've seen or read that gives me such a detailed insight into what a footballer's life actually is. Ok, it's only one footballer, and you can dislike him or otherwise, but it's not often that you get an in-depth straight talking interview about a footballer's entire trajectory, from when he played in the street at the foot of his tower block, with jumpers on the tarmac for nets (I'm quoting him there) through youth teams, then several important clubs and on to his current role as a consultant for French television. I'd love to have had the same thing from, say, Lakey. There is the book, which I bought and read, but it's not the same.
It's also a pity, for those who don't have French, that Samir didn't do that interview in English. Perhaps he ought to.

 

[kaz7]

I quite liked Nasri and I tend to think the accusations of being a mercenary or lazy are more about assumptions of his character than anything that happened on the pitch.

There’s nothing in this interview which contradicts what’s already been aired about Mancini’s time at City. Wearing a scarf and ‘tearing the banner down’ just struck me as good PR, but the other side of the coin was an ongoing sense of drama and instability which did nothing for performances on the pitch. With the squad we had we should have won the league by far more than goal difference in 2012 and it was Mancini’s intransigence which resulted in Van Persie going to the rags which pretty much cost us the league the following seasons. Tevez being unavailable for much of the 11/12 season because Mancini invented a fictional version of events in Munich was ia sackable offence.

Mancini’s biggest flaw was that he thought he was bigger than the club and could play political games, negotiate with alternative employers, dictate transfer strategy, demand signings on a plate and drive players out of the door without any of it coming back to him. Without getting in to national stereotypes, perhaps he did think City would cheat there way through FFP so he could have five centre forwards, Hazard, AND De Rossi without having to sell anyone despite it being obvious to all and sundry that this was not going to happen.

Prior to joining City Mancini’s record in club management was good but not great and the same could be said for his post City club career. Managing City was the peak of his career but he never realised what he had and let it slip away. Ironically, perhaps the same could be said about Nasri?

As an aside, it's been said that Mancini didn’t do much in the way of team talks and it was usually Kompany who got things organised in the dressing room. One of Mancini’s main weaknesses was that he was quite tactically limited which was very apparent in Europe and on any occasion we played a side using 3,5,2 – the FA Cup final being a prime example.

What I struggle to understand is the masturbatory reverence in which Mancini is still held by people who treat Pellegrini with equal levels of disdain. They won similar amounts but the main difference is that Pellegrini did so under the constraints of FFP and with much better performances in the Champions League.

Mancini did get some big things right - facing down the egos in the squad, putting the pressure back on the rags in 11/12 title race and also taking the heat for the 3-0 defeat at Anfield the Monday before the FA Cup semi-final. However, overall, only achieved the minimum of what he should and by the end of 12/13 had, arguably, set us back.

Pile of bollocks

 

[eastmanc]

I don't hate him at all. I loved him as a player when he was on it (as he often was) and, having been behind the goal when he scored at Wembley vs Sunderland, he game me one of my great memories of that time. But that doesn't prevent me for seeing his character flaws. He was a lad that played for City, not some sanctified deity.

I think you are wrong to believe that I think he was, as you put it, some sanctified deity. He was a very good footballer, not the best we've had but certainty the worst.

 

[Phil Mitchell Foden]

A small group of us got absolutely hammered for years on this forum for reporting that this stuff was happening. Notice he said that the whole squad went to see Khaldoon to ask for his sacking too. We were totally rubbished from all corners.

Just thought I’d mention it. Some of you know who you are ;-)

Doesn't excuse them throwing the FA Cup final when the Pellegrini rumours were leaked by Barca.