Just read a daniel taylor article in the guardian and whilst he comes across as "watchout for City" he still likes to beat us with the 34 yrs thing and we`ve spent £515 since the prem started. A couple of things I was unaware of were:
Towards the end of last season, a group of City fans tried to steal the infamous 'ticker' banner from Old Trafford, gaining entry via one of the stadium tours.
and.
Over the summer a fitness hill has been built at the training ground, on Mancini's instructions, for Tevez et al to enjoy
and the best one
Ferguson, citing the influence of City, spoke last week of English football's Big Four being "squashed". The United manager has stopped referring to the City of Manchester stadium as the "Temple of Doom". Gary Neville, one of those Old Trafford men you imagine having "Glory Glory Man United" as a ringtone, has accepted the challenge is real. "City will be powerful over the next few years – we've got to get our heads around that. The players they're signing, the manager they've got, the fan-base they've got ... they will be powerful."
Full article at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog ... ue-previewPremier League preview No11: Manchester CityCity are still a season away from the Premier League title, but there is no other club with so much momentum going into the new season
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Can Roberto Mancini lead Manchester City to their first trophy since 1976? Photograph: Barrington Coombs/Empics
Guardian writers' prediction: 2nd (NB: this is not necessarily Daniel's prediction, but the average of our writers' tips)
Last season's position: 5th
Odds to win the league: 11-2
So, this is what it comes down to: can the buggers win a trophy? The wind has stopped howling, the curtains are not trembling any more. Manchester City, once again, is a happy place to be. But after all the spending, all the big deals and all the "talk" (to quote Sir Alex Ferguson), it all comes back to one thing: can they actually win something to justify the expenditure and demonstrate how far they have come since the days when the club seemed perpetually on the edge of a nervous breakdown?
It doesn't even have to be the Premier League. That's the dream, of course, for those supporters who have been the one constant as managers, directors and players have come and gone, big on promises, low on achievement. But the truth is any trophy will do. That's the way it is when 34 years have passed since the last one and there's a banner on permanent display at Old Trafford to tell the world.
August used to be a time when City supporters would get together, grumbling, reminiscing, pints in hands, talking cynically about being "just as terrible this year". Now the talk is of which player is coming next, of breaking into the Champions League and, after that, how long it will be before they have a proper chance of winning it.
"This is our year" is the slogan emblazoned across city-centre buses in Manchester (in tell-tale blue). A little presumptuous, perhaps, given that they finished 19 points off the top last season. But what we can say for certain is that there is no other club with so much momentum going into the new season.
This summer has already seen four new signings, costing £77m, with James Milner and Mario Balotelli also on their way, meaning the spending will total around £130m by the end of the transfer window, to go with last season's £144m outlay. If everything goes according to plan, by the start of September City's total spending in the Premier League years will be up to £515m, with more than half coming since that seminal September day in 2008 when the Abu Dhabi United Group, sitting on one-tenth of the planet's oil reserves, took control. Manchester United have spent £419.35m. Chelsea, with £563.34m, are the only club to have spent more though it can't be long before they are caught. January, in all likelihood.
Whether it will be enough for City to mount an authentic title challenge depends on how quickly the new players settle in and whether Roberto Mancini makes the right choices when it comes to establishing a first-choice line-up. That's not a straightforward process and, while it would be wrong to read too much into their pre-season results (four defeats in six games), there have been only five occasions in the Premier League (Manchester United in 1999, 2003 and 2008 and Chelsea in 2005 and 2006) when the biggest spenders have won the league.
Ferguson, citing the influence of City, spoke last week of English football's Big Four being "squashed". The United manager has stopped referring to the City of Manchester stadium as the "Temple of Doom". Gary Neville, one of those Old Trafford men you imagine having "Glory Glory Man United" as a ringtone, has accepted the challenge is real. "City will be powerful over the next few years – we've got to get our heads around that. The players they're signing, the manager they've got, the fan-base they've got ... they will be powerful."
But there are still imperfections in the current squad. At centre-half, for example, Joleon Lescott showed little last season to demonstrate he is equipped for the level to which City aspire. Kolo Touré, in the same position, simply reminded us that Arsène Wenger does not sell players without good reason. Jérôme Boateng, the Germany international defender, has signed from Hamburg and partnered Vincent Kompany against Valencia at the weekend. That may well be the partnership Mancini goes for against Spurs on Saturday, with Touré losing the captaincy. Nonetheless, it is a surprise City have not made this area more of a priority.
Elsewhere in defence another weak link, Wayne Bridge, is likely to be removed from the team now that Aleksandar Kolarov has arrived from Lazio. At right-back Mancini can take his pick from Boateng, Pablo Zabaleta or Micah Richards, whereas in goal Shay Given versus Joe Hart is even less clear. Given, on form, is worth 10 points a season but the Republic of Ireland international is not flawless: hesitant when dealing with crosses and not always dominant inside the penalty area, and it cannot be guaranteed he will keep his place.
Mancini is in the position of having two established players for every position. In fact, he can choose from six – Yaya Touré, Gareth Barry, Nigel de Jong, Patrick Vieira, Kompany and Zabaleta – when it comes to defensive midfielders. The creativity will be supplied by Milner, Balotelli and David Silva with Shaun Wright-Phillips and Adam Johnson in reserve. Balotelli should be a rich source of goals, along with Carlos Tevez and Emmanuel Adebayor, though you cannot hide the fact it is a significant blow not being able to coax Edin Dzeko from Wolfsburg or the dream signing, Fernando Torres of Liverpool.
The battle for Mancini will almost certainly be handling the players who are not getting into the team. Big players with big salaries and big reputations do not like being left on the bench but the Italian has already shown he is not afraid of making unpopular decisions and, if necessary, grazing a few egos.
Hughes had toughened up the training regime after taking over from Sven-Goran Eriksson but Mancini took it even further, introducing double sessions on Tuesdays (before non-match days) and then winning his battle of wills with Tevez when the Argentinian complained in public. Over the summer a fitness hill has been built at the training ground, on Mancini's instructions, for Tevez et al to enjoy. Think of the Sean Connery 1965 film The Hill, in which military prisoners were forced to run up a steep, sharp incline in the African sun, dragging sacks of dirt.
I've seen this hill and it's bloody steep.
Mancini has also brought in David Platt, a former Sampdoria team-mate, as first-team coach, supposedly alongside Brian Kidd but, in truth, as the more senior man, an appointment the fans have received like a snowball in the face. Equally, many supporters dislike the fact Craig Bellamy and Stephen Ireland look on the way out but, again, Mancini has demonstrated he is a man to follow his own instincts.
Bellamy is a Hughes man and it counts against him that a) he has caused Mancini problems behind the scenes and b) his form has tailed off since the manager who brought him to the club was sent to the guillotine last December. As for Ireland, he is a complex case: City's staff rate him among the club's top five players in terms of talent, but the bottom five when it comes to having the strength of mind that is needed to be a sportsman at the highest level.
The sad fact of modern-day City is that the youth-academy graduates are slowly being phased out but it was always going to be this way once the men in Abu Dhabi handed the club the keys to the entire football universe. Six City players featured in the latest list of the top 50 highest football salaries published by Futebol Finance, the same as Real Madrid and behind only Barcelona and Chelsea. At least half a dozen members of Mancini's squad earn in excess of £100,000 a week. Bridge, now a reserve left-back, gets £90,000. The reports of Yaya Touré being on £221,000 a week are incorrect but it not far off and he has overtaken Robinho, on a mere £160,000, as the highest-paid footballer in the league.
When City last released their accounts it showed the wage bill had gone from £38m to £83m in five years, and that did not include Tevez, Adebayor, Barry, Vieira, Lescott, Kolo Touré and Roque Santa Cruz. Add to that this summer's recruits and it could conceivably be in the region of £130m by the end of August, with no end in sight. Hughes tells the story of his first meeting with Sheikh Mansour and being asked to identify the one fantasy player he would love in his team. "I'd say Wayne Rooney," he said after a few moments deliberation. "OK, well let us know if we should make a bid for him?" came the reply, deadly serious.
The downside of all this money talk is that City have lost their status as English football's favourite second club. We used to love and pity them in equal measure but some of that innocence has been lost. Eastlands, increasingly, has a big-time feel. Another £1.5m has been spent on ground improvements including thermostatically controlled leather seating in the VIP areas. There are men in blazers on every entrance, wired up to walkie-talkies. The club have come to be depicted as the nouveaux riches of the sport, lottery winners with scratchcard grime stuck beneath their fingernails. In truth, a lot of the fear and loathing – it has become a standing joke behind the scenes how many times they can be accused of "destroying football" – stems purely from jealousy.
But back to the original question, can they actually win something? A personal view is that they are one season away from catching and overhauling Chelsea and United but this will be the year they make it to a cup final and reach the Champions League. For now, they will have to make do with the Europa League, which is a fairly jumbled and unloved competition, like collecting 14 tokens from a newspaper (even though you don't like that newspaper) to win a tin of shortbread.
But then it comes back to the fact City have not won a trophy since the League Cup in 1976. Towards the end of last season, a group of City fans tried to steal the infamous 'ticker' banner from Old Trafford, gaining entry via one of the stadium tours. They were foiled. Now, damn it, it's down to the team. But if they fail, the harsh reality of this cut-throat, knee-jerk world is that Mancini will probably go the same way as Hughes.
by shawzy » Sun Aug 08, 2010 11:49 pm 
