da betsul： Supplementing a Premier League title win with a second-placed finish the following campaign clearly isn’t everyone’s idea of progress, yet there seems something very surreal about the firing line that Roberto Mancini finds himself in at Manchester City.
da casino： With his side having all but surrendered the title that they fought so hard to win last term and with a dejecting 15-point gap hammering home the chasm in quality between themselves and Manchester United, the Italian has cut something of a divisive figure with many.
Indeed, far from looking forward to rebuilding the side this summer and looking to regroup towards an assault on regaining their Premier League crown from across Manchester, there has been a school of thought that Mancini’s goose might already be cooked up at the Etihad Stadium.
The seemingly endless resources available at City ensure that both success and failure will always be measured up somewhat unfairly against whoever sits within the managerial hotseat at the Etihad and consequently Mancini has often found himself in a loose-loose situation.
Deliver success and the naysayers are always going to dilute any achievements with the petromillions used to attain them in the first place. Fail and those same resources are wheeled out with the common belief that one should do better with such unrivalled financial luxuries. For however you feel about the former Internazionale-manager, it’s a tough ride at times up on the blue half of Manchester.
[post_link url=”https://www.footballfancast.com/premiership/manchester-united/manchester-united-has-a-duty-to-lead-the-way-surely,https://www.footballfancast.com/premiership/manchester-city/manchester-city-ace-close-to-return,https://www.footballfancast.com/premiership/manchester-united/manchester-united-star-admits-frustrations” target=”_blank” type=”tower”]
Yet while Mancini has quite rightly taken his universal share of criticism for failing to instill the sort of hunger and desire needed to mount another title-push this season, he can at least find one unlikely ally in that of former-Liverpool defender and Match of the Day pundit, Alan Hansen.
Hansen’s recent musings in his Daily Telegraph column went down like a lead balloon with many after the Scot suggested that Mancini should have in fact left Manchester City after the club failed to bring in his requested transfer targets.
The initial response seems to have been one of ridicule from the wider footballing public. Every manager has some form of financial ceiling to work under, so why should Mancini throw his toys out the pram after finally reaching his? City won the title after investing an almost unworldly amount of money and surely a truer test of the Italian’s managerial pedigree is how he copes when he doesn’t have the Football Manager-like bank balance at his disposal?
However, while much of the aforementioned rings true, so does the fact that while others around them moved forward during last summer, Manchester City stood still. And for however you wish to frame it, despite City’s disintegration owing to a lot more than basic failings in the transfer window, their failure to improve their squad over the summer has played a catalyzing part in deciding their destiny this season. And it’s a failure that could ultimately cost Mancini his job.
Regardless of any additions that were there to be made during the summer, let’s not be under any illusions here; Roberto Mancini should have done a hell of a lot better with the players he’s had at his disposal this term.
Bar the departures of Nigel de Jong and Adam Johnson – both of whom spent large parts of last season’s title-winning campaign on the periphery – Mancini’s title-winning team of 2012 has stayed intact and the fact they find themselves a staggering 15 points adrift of United cannot be underpinned by any number of injuries, suspensions or layers of controversy at the club.
Yet if City took a huge leap forward in lifting the title for the first time since the Premier League era began last term, last summer suggested they’ve still got a hell of a lot to learn if they have any real designs on building a dynasty even remotely like the one their neighbours in red up the road lay claim to.
Because every single summer, irrespective of their success in the league, Sir Alex Ferguson will go out and add quality to his side and look to try and add something better than what he already has. It’s easy to put too much emphasis on the signing of one Robin van Persie – a player who sat at the top of Mancini’s wish-list by quite some distance last summer – but for better or worse, the onus is always on improvement at Old Trafford. And that doesn’t stop with a Premier League title win.
Had Mancini been somewhat optimistic in wanting his club to splash out £24million on Van Persie and then throw another £33million at Roma for midfield enforcer Daniele de Rossi?
Perhaps so, but bar the swap deal involving Stefan Savic and Matija Nastasic, the accumulation of Jack Rodwell, Scott Sinclair, Maicon and Javi Garcia do not even represent a half-way house on the sort of targets Mancini was looking to add during the summer.
With neither Rodwell, Sinclair or Maicon managing more than four starts in the Premier League, you get an idea as to how woefully ineffective City’s summer spending has been. While Nastasic has at least looked promising this term, Garcia has looked a player that would struggle to command a starting berth for any of the league’s top six clubs, let alone one looking to mount a title challenge.
And this is where Mancini perhaps has come in for undue critique this term. The Italian has had his failings and if the proverbial guillotine does come crashing down upon him, few in the Premier League will be offering too much sympathy. But be it Mancini, Mourinho, Klopp or De Boer in the managerial post next season, Manchester City must avoid a repeat of their transfer policy last summer.