It would have been interesting to see what would have happened in this amount of time if Mancini hadn't been sacked, I'm not saying he shouldn't have been sacked because the board obviously had their own very obvious reasons for doing so, but if we'd had Mancini till now and then seen Pep take charge that would have been an interesting prospect for me. On the otherhand hiring Pellegrini, it was a bit of an error, I mean they were hiring a manager who had no real track record in terms of winning trophies at his previous jobs, if you judge him by his first season he brought calm into the club and some of his signings weren't too bad to begin with either, Fernandinho, Negredo, Navas (Navas obviously only in first season), plus he did well to calm that poor run of form Joe Hart had by bringing in Pantimilon instead into the side.
But you could still argue Mancinis team basically won him the title even though his signings did do their jobs respectively in games, 2nd season we were really inconsistent, had runs of form where we were the old city of good and then the runs of the bad form, plus I kept thinking at times we should have done more to close in on Chelsea in the title race, but at the end of the day you aren't going to win the league every year so it's not particulary that that worried me, what worried me was the signings, Fernando, Mangala both flopped it's fair to say, Bony was a panic buy that hasn't worked and the others were mostly low key signings to fill out the squad that didn't have huge impacts, plus he frustrated me by loaning out Negredo at a bad time which made our strike force weak a bit like he did with Dzeko and Jovetic this year when he definitely could have played a part, disappointing for me more that the passion seemed to go out of that team in the inconsistent patches, doesn't help when none of your signings work out.
Then you have this season which started promisingly, I think Sterling we really overpaid for, we played into Liverpools hands to the point where it was like they forced us to come and get him from them, we should have just got someone european in and made a statement instead of overpaying for a player who wasn't really the finished article and only because he was english, then Otamendi who has been 50/50 has shown glimpses, the jury is still out on him, then you've got De Bruyne who is nothing short of inspirational and him and Pep will probably be the two most salvagable things from this season in terms of positives, then Delph who isn't bad, a bit like a cross between Barry and Milner, good enough for a squad player and I'd prefer him over Fernando any day but unfortunately he always seems to be injured.
So anyway positive start but it has fizzled out to the point where the club a/ can't beat anyone inside the top 8 and b/ can't win consequetive league games, at the end of the day it's obvious this season has been the worst out of the 3, and he definitely would have been sacked by now if Pep wasn't coming in, at the end of the day I don't care if Pellegrini is a gentleman and has handled this thing with tremendous respect, he has to take at least part of the blame for me he's naive and is tactically weak, plus he doesn't seem to motivate most of the players which is a huge problem especially this year as a lot of them don't seem to be up for games. Also regarding the PSG game it is not a given we are going to be destroyed, if anything our Champions League run is there to prove that is the one competition we can do well in this season (not including League Cup for obvious reasons) and although it wont be easy with Hart out I will always be behind the troops and I'd love to see them take the game to them and give them a good match.
