King Kev wrote:I believe our actions in the transfer market over the last 12 months have cost us the league this year;
Allowing de Jong to leave when he played such an important role for us in recent seasons
Singing uninspiring players such as Sinclair, Rodwell, Maicon, Garcia and Nastasic (the last 2 seem ok but haven't improved us from last season)
Allowing van Persie to go to our main rivals. If we had really tried to sign him we could have got him
Allowing one of our main strikers to leave the club with no time to replace him.
I know a lot of people blame Mancini entirely and want him replaced, however it seems to me that recently he is being asked to manage our club with one hand tied behind his back.
The club appear to have sat back and rested on their laurels since winning the league when then should be looking at making our squad even stronger to take us to the next level.
He is simply being asked to manage, and appears to be coming up short.
He wanted to add Van Persie to the league's top scorers. We had 4 front line high profile strikers all of whom contributed last season. I understand fully why we may not have gone balls out to sign him, and the likelihood is he would probably always have signed for the rags regardless. On the sale of Balotelli, we managed adequately with 3 for the bulk of last season and won the league.
He wanted to sign Javi Martinez or DDR, at a significant cost. One moved to one of the top sides in Europe, one stayed put with a new contract and would have been a very expensive short term fix anyway. You cant win em all, and we increasingly cant just keep dishing out monster contracts to sate Mancinis desire to have the best player in every position.
Where it did all go wrong is some stupid cunt sanctioned the signing of Garcia and Rodwell, along with Scott Sinclair instead. None of these were upto the required standard and cost us the best part of £50m. We then also signed another rightback, making that 3 potentially world class right backs. Arguably out of all that lot only Maicon was justified because of the injury situation with Micah, but having said that only if the club knew Richards' injury problems werent straightforward.
The signing of Rodwell and particularly Garcia was totally unjustified. We let De Jong go for 2.5m and replaced him with unproven players, one of whom i assume we used the same doctor we used for the RSC transfer. The reality of all this was, why the fuck not let the clock run down on De Jong and go for free rather than rushing him out the door for a pittance. The money could have been saved for a bash at Wilshere or some other young combative midfielder in the coming summer.
I'm not saying De Jong was the answer to the current problems, he isnt, but the clubs strategy from then,right the way upto selling balotelli and leaving us exposed to the risk of having no striker on the bench is poor, amateur at best and shows a remarkable lack of forethought.
But, despite all this, I expect Mancini was expected to manage with what he had. If you llok at our rivals attack for example, they have 2x £200k a week strikers, then two on a pittance and wingers who contribute to the goalscoring. We had 4 costing, none of whom were on less than £100k, and 2 of whom I bet were approaching Rooney/RvP wages. Its just not sustainable to have that money leaking out of the club on players sitting on the bench moving forwards, so I fully understand the club's move in that direction.
And what he had is good enough to win the last 3 games, provided you MANAGE your resources by means of motivation, teamwork and tactics. Sadly in all 3 games, as with many others this season, mancini's lack of ability to do his basic job, to manage has been cruelly exposed.
Yes, united invested and we didnt, but that investment should not see the title seemingly virtually wrapped up by the second week in February. RVP has 3 more goals to his name than Rooney did at this stage of last season, so I dont buy it that RVP is the difference.....if he wasnt there, Rooney would be bagging them just as consistenly. I refuse to believe that the loss of Adam Johnson and De Jong are the cause of that, and anyone who says it is is trivialising the issue.
I dont know where we go from here, but all signs point to a new manager in the summer - especially as with the new ffp threat, mancinis preferred management style of "buy more players" is simply not gonna happen. Its sad, but maybe we have run our course with Mancini and managers of his ilk
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