We lost badly to an Ajax side that played only 4 of their 11 from last year, most of the newcomers being academy "grads". Mancini humiliated himself with shitty management mid-game (directly leading to a goal) and didn't adjust his tactics to stop the first goal (Even Martin Tyler was discussing the weakness on the right wing 5 minutes before it went in). Then he put all four strikers on, thus having absolutely no midfield system and expected something from it???
I've never seen anything like it at this level. Never seen a world class left back not know what his role is when a frantic change to the system we've done nothing but fail at (3-5-2). Never seen a manager in two consecutive games switch the formation to the system that everyone knows unsettles his squad. You could see Ajax push forward and pressurize our defense after Mancini made the call for 3 at the back. Can anyone tell me you honestly weren't shouting at him when he made that call? Then he goes and immediately changes it back to 4-4-2. He's lost the fucking plot.
This season, we've gotten one point (theft if we're all honest), and Mancini has made glaring tactical mistakes in each game. What other club in recent Champions League memory can look at three poor results and point directly to the manager as the cause? When have any of you seen a manager change formations no less than 3 times and confuse the hell out of his players?
Worse yet, not only does not playing knockout matches hurt our revenue and compliance with FFP, but what world class players are going to want to join a club with a manager that appears to be inept in Europe??? Its going to cost us that much more to sign the players to continue improving this squad when they can point to the risk of poor Champions League runs.
We can discuss how we should have gone through last season, but we got 6 of our 10 points from a team that ended up getting relegated from La Liga and lost every group game (came closest to drawing with us though), 3 of the 10 were from a reserves Bayern Munich squad at home, and one was from Napoli at home.
Sorry to say, guys and gals, but us being happy with the league and the occasional domestic cup is not what Mansour invested nearly a billion pounds for. Financial Fair Play is going to screw the entire club if we aren't pulling in extra revenue from the last 16. Five years ago I'd have told you I'd be happy being mid-table in early May, now I know that for this investment strategy to work, even Premier league titles aren't going to be enough.
