moomba said:
And here's me thinking that we were supposed to be getting over Hughes, I'm sure there is at least one poster in this thread that has been telling all and sundry that the comparisons between Mancini and Hughes must stop, but has suddenly changed his mind after our first loss.
As to the tactics, I would have bought Benjani on for RSC, and don't like SWP on the left or Petrov on the right. But I'm not going to start calling a manager that has won 4 of his first 5 matches tactically naive, that would just be silly.
Still, if you've been desperately waiting a long 4 weeks to make a point I can see how you'd go a bit over the top in your criticism.
To be fair, I think the Hughes outters were the ones who created this lot by constantly labelling anyone who didn't believe that Mark Hughes should be booted as being anti-city whilst acting superior with the post game armchair quarterbacking of Hughes every move. Now that those outters have their man in, they deem it anti-city to question any decision Mancini makes because he beat 4 teams any coach should given the team we have. Can't have your cake and eat it too. :)
Against Everton we were simply horrible, period. The whole game from the choice of the starting 11, the subs and tactics were simply all wrong. We acknowledged going into the game that Everton would be coming at us hard physically, so we have Craig Bellamy on the left who is a great player but has a bigger mouth than body and Martin "Why can't I just have 2 left feet?" Petrov playing on the right which I assume was to employ the use of in-swinger crosses to RSC.
However, once RSC went down for the 7 billionth time this season due to injury and we brought in Robinho, why did we keep attempting this tactic? The several crosses that Petrov made after coming to a bungee cord like stop on the right flank to get the ball to his left foot basically ended up killing the flow, allowing Everton's players to catch up to the play causing wasted opportunities. Besides, Robbie and Tevez were getting tossed around like midget wrestlers against Everton's back 4 and mids, so crosses to them were pointless. Bringing on Benjani later was the right move, but the wasted substituion on Robinho (a player sorely missing Ireland's influence in the team) meant we wasted opportunities to make more effective substitutes like possibly bringing in Boyata to push Kompany into midfield to add some height.
Mancini is more tactically astute than Mark Hughes currently is but that doesn't implicitly imply that Hughes was a tactical flop either. Hughes took a more attack minded approach to his games which in turn left the back 4 more exposed to attacks, which obviously they were unable to cope with. Not an unreasonable approach given the attacking players at his disposal.
Mancini's 4-4-2 or 4-3-1-2 with emphasis on solid team defending hasn't improved that back 4, it has simply reduced the number of chances they have faced by counting on having a strong defensive mid-field 4 against weaker opposition which has given the appearance of improvement. Against teams with strong mid fields, this reliance on an overly defensive midfield comes at the expense of attacking prowess which has shown against the tougher competition we've had such as Everton. The reality is that despite all the hype since Mancini arrived, the team is no better positioned now that it was under Hughes to make a challenge for the top 4 positions. Mancini is good, but not god yet. ;)
