the_georgian_genius wrote:ant london wrote:Serious question for you Georgian Genius
What is your appraisal of how Mancini currently has us playing
What do you think are the positives
And the negatives and....
How do you predict that our season will end?
I think he is very very cautious with us, based on the fact that Champions League football is so vital to us. I think he would rather win scrappy slow games than play pretty fast flowing attacking football and lose a couple, but only this season.
I used to watch Inter Milan when he was in charged because they are my favourite non english team and i have been to see them a couple of times over the last decade so i have a bit of a soft spot for them and whenever i watched them i never saw them play boring football, they were an exciting pretty team to watch and he too was a creative flair player who played beautiful football.
It is because of the above that i don't think this is the kind of football we will be seeing under him if he is to stay for a while, i think if we were to get in the champions league he would release the shackles on his side and we would then see the team play this fast tempo game we all love to see and with the players we have i know it will be good to watch, we have seen potentially this season how good we can be.
Could we play fast flowing up tempo football with this side and get in the champions league? Without a doubt but that's his decision and if we get champions league football next year does anyone really care how we did it this season? Next season we should care but this season? Nah, lets get passed that hurdle first.
The positives, for one i like the players he has bought. Silva is different class, Yaya no matter what anyone says is a top player, Balotelli is unreal when he wants to be, Boateng has looked fantastic at Centre half even if he hasn't shown that form that often, Milner is a player every team in this league would love to have, the only one i have doubts about is Kolarov who at the minute looks a poor buy but as always i will give him time, next season is the best time to judge him properly and secondly, all top sides are built from the back and we look brilliant at the back, 2nd best defence in the league? Impressive that and more so when you take into account most of them are Hughes's boys who looked so clueless when he was in charge not to mention we could of had David Luiz if the board had not acted so slow and lost him to Chelsea.
The negatives, like i said above he is very cautious but in my mind that is temporary.
As for the rest of the season, i think we will finish 3rd, the FA Cup is a lottery, if we beat United i think we will win that which would mean this season we would of qualified for the champions league and won our first trophy in 35 years which would be fan fucking tastic. If we don't finish in the top four then i would have to have a long hard think if he should go or not and at the moment in my mind he probably would have to go.
I think that's a reasonable argument & I too think we will finish 3rd & possibly win the FA Cup but to look at it from another perspective:
For a start, I watched Mancini's Inter a fair bit & wheras I accept there must have been plenty of occasions where they played 'brilliant football' because too many have seen it for it to be a myth, I know for a fact they were often as dull as fuck because I saw them do it; they were often awful, win lose or draw when I saw them. The most worrying aspect of that is: I saw them quite a lot in Mancini's latter stages & often, the football they played was every bit as negative as City at their worst. Not only that, but they played a lot of longball, when I saw them. I can remember games where their ponderous midfield sat deep & when they got the ball, they whacked it long to Ibrahimovic & failed to get forward in numbers to support him (on the rare occasions he didn't give the ball away). How did City play on sunday with Dzeko? Pure coincidence? Add to that; slow movement of the ball & lack of pace in the team.
I don't doubt that Bob would prefer to play better football than that & at times has been adventurous with City, where I have my doubts is that he is capable of sustaining a team that plays winning, entertaining football. I think that's fine when things are going well but as soon as anything goes wrong, his natural instinct is to go back to what he knows best & when he resists it (as in Kiev) he's vulnerable to losing the plot completely. He has not yet proved he can do it, with us or with Inter imo.
It's true to say that he's made an improvement on the defence (with Hughes' boys presumably Viinny, Lescott, Zabba, Micah who would all be shit if not for Bob?) but ONLY when he sets the team up to defend. In the games when we've tried to attack & the defence has been left to fend for itself (as in Hughes days) for the most part the defence has been fucking awful & been overrun by Blackpool twice, Wolves twice, Wigan & Fulham to name just a few. Not only that but in spite of many months of defensive training, we have not improved one iota at defending set pieces from when Hughes was here. If anything, we had a spell where we were becoming a laughing stock in that respect but tbf, that was more down to Bob's team selection rather than just his organisation.
In short, Bob can organise a TEAM to defend but has shown no ability so far to organise a reliable back 4 in an attacking team. I recon Neil Warnock or Sam Allardyce could also organise our team to defend as could most Premier League managers & plenty in the lower leagues.
The question of whether we can play attacking football & get top 4; perhaps WE can't but Spurs, Arsenal & Rags can. I have no reason to assume that a manager other than Bob couldn't have built a successful attacking side on top of the players Hughes left behind, it was a good base to build on, however much people like to slate it. I also see no evidence in football anywhere which says that a team trying to crack the top positions has to be overly cautious. It's a matter of choice & managerial ability.
Re signings; Silva has been excellent, the rest range between poor & so so. I believe they will improve on the whole, like many of Hughes' signings did but that didn't stop him from being sacked & people tend to only remember the mistakes, so Bob has some work to do.
I haven't lost hope in Bob & I do think we will end the season in a good position. I also think he's done little to prove that he is an outstanding manager. Imo any manager including Hughes would have been expected to do at least as well as Bob & better as far as entertainment goes. He could turn out to be fantastic long term but he could also turn out to be a waste of space.
On the evidence we have so far there's an argument for either case but no convincing argument; both are based based on speculation. Neither argument is proven.
