For those who can't be arsed clicking the link (hope you don't mind mate):
Wednesday, 10 August 2011Interview: Daniel Taylor from the Guardian
Awash with curiosity, and in the midst of pre-season boredom I decided to approach Daniel Taylor from the Guardian last week to see if he was willing to offer up his opinion and insight and discuss all things Manchester City Football Club. Fortunately, and admittedly unexpectedly given his no doubt busy nature, he was more than willing to oblige. He happily answered some questions for me in detail, offering his views and reasoning on several important subjects surrounding the club. As both a football and a Manchester City fan I personally found his words fascinating. Have a read....
IEK: Sneijder - is there anything in this? Or the Nasri situation?
DT: Not Sneijder, but there have been a lot of encouraging noises about Nasri this week and, if everything goes according to plan, he should be in place soon. The money side is agreed and he's told City that this is where he wants to be. After that, the only issue has been convincing Arsenal to sell him, which isn't an easy process when you're talking about, possibly, the Arsenal board over-ruling Arsene Wenger - or Wenger himself having to back down. But there are signs that Arsenal's position is relaxing. When United put in a bid earlier in the summer Arsenal not only dismissed it out of hand but didn't even bother with the courtesy of an official reply, which tells you everything you need to know. There isn't that historic rivalry between Arsenal and City, and that has helped the negotiations. But City, for now, aren’t going to say anything about it because they know it’s a sensitive issue for Wenger.
IEK: How do you rate City's chances this season?
DT: In the Guardian I’ve put United first and City second (apologies) but I’d feel a lot more confident about predictions once we’ve got to the end of the transfer window and we can see who has signed and where. As it stands, I think you can win the league but, as for whether you will, you need a bit of luck with injuries, suspensions etc and, so far, you've not had much considering you have been drawn to play away from home after all six of the Champions League group games. Little things like that can count because I think Mancini had a legitimate point when he said the squad wasn't quite big enough to cope with both a title chase and the Champions League. A couple more signings - Nasri and another - would make a big difference and, if that happens, it's going to be a close-run thing.
That said, I'm not entirely confident the team can score the "ten to 15 more goals" that Mancini believes will be needed in the league. For that to happen, a lot depends on Aguero clicking straight away. Balotelli and Dzeko will have to do better than last season but, even then, nobody can be sure what's going to happen with the Tevez situation. Yes, we’ll all probably relieved when the saga is over, but we're also talking here about someone who set up or scored 48 per cent of the team's league goals last season. I'm willing to be proven wrong but I think he will be hugely missed if he leaves.
IEK: Balotelli - will he waste his talent or go on to be a world superstar?
DT: Where do you start? He could be City's player-of-the-year, or he could spend another season making you wonder whether he is worth all the hassle - because, seriously, Mancini has been a lone voice within the club at times. There are other people, high up, who think he's a liability. But who can really say what happens next? I've got to know Balotelli's family and they're lovely, genuine people, but even they don't understand him sometimes. He plays well in the cup final, ignores Stoke's attempts to wind him up (Robert Huth smashing him in the jaw) rises above it all and you think, Christ, he's finally shown us he can do it. And then he can't even be bothered to go on the open-top bus parade, or attend the player-of-the-year dinner. He gets a two-week fine and, again, you just wonder what is going on in his mind.
I want it to work for him, I like the way he doesn't conform to type and it intrigues me that Mancini seems so certain that, one day, we will be talking about him alongside Ronaldo, Messi, Xavi etc but if I'm being totally honest I can't recall a single moment when he's done something exceptional. He has talent, obviously, he's scored a decent amount of goals and, yes, he has had the problem with his knee - but I've never seen him play the seemingly impossible pass, or dribble past three defenders, or take hold of a football match and be the player who makes the difference. I can't recall the opposition - a manager or a player - eulogising about him.
Off the pitch, I do think he's 'misunderstood' sometimes, even if that is a bit of a cliche. He speaks before he thinks, and a lot of the stuff he says is intended as a joke but in black and white can come across as an insult (the stuff about Wilshere for example). He's been homesick ever since he got here but, on the flipside, he never tried to get another club over the summer and I know he really wants to have at least one successful season in England. He's been frustrated with himself - which might, in turn, lead to the flashes of temper, the strops, the training-ground issues.
The problem in football is that getting a bad name is easier than losing one. But, in fairness to him, there's been a lot of mistruths about him, a lot of fallacies. The Sun ran one story about him winning a small fortune at a casino one night and then handing over £1,000 of it to a homeless person outside. It was actually a couple of £20 notes. And it was Micah Richards.
IEK: Mancini - are you a fan? Is he the right man to take City forward and do you think his new-found seriousness is a good thing? How do the press get on with him compared to previous managers?
DT: The more I see of him the more I realise what a complex bloke he is. I find the guy fascinating, to be honest. He'll smile at you, his eyes will twinkle and he has that sophisticated charm . . . but you know, you just know, he's one of the hardest bastards you'll ever meet. And one of the most political. He doesn't bend for anybody. He's ruthless, he's driven, he knows exactly what he wants, he wins his battles, or the majority of them anyway - Adebayor, Bellamy, Hughes. He's made it very much at City that he's The Boss and there's been a definite change in him even since the end of last season. He seems a lot more detached, he's picked his allies (and his enemies). A small thing, perhaps, but he didn't even go to the club’s staff party during the trip to LA. Then he did that interview where he talked of wanting more control and, to paraphrase, pretty much said that he was worried Cook/Marwood were screwing everything up.
As for his relationship with the press, he keeps us an arm's length away, but that's to be expected and, overall, I’d say we get on fine. It's very rare these days for the manager of a top-six club to hand out his mobile number and suggest after-work drinks etc. That's just the way it has gone over the last few years and it was the same with Hughes as well (all that stuff about Hughes's 'media mates' looking after him . . . I have to say that's one of the great myths).
Joe Royle was probably the last City manager who was on matey terms and would have a beer on trips, though that's going back a while. Stuart Pearce never really liked the media side of things and Kevin Keegan was always scarred from the England experience. His first words when we filed in for his first press conference were: 'Oh, here come the vultures.'
Sven was a bit more genial. He'd come to the football writers' dinners (mostly, in fairness, because it was held at the Radisson and he lived on the top floor), order the wine and flirt with the waitresses. The Daily Star ran a series of photos of him one day dancing in the hotel bar with a 'mystery brunette' and, by the last picture, the crafty old fox had slipped his hand over her bum. Or at least it looked like he had. It turned out - and I know I shouldn't find this funny - it was actually his daughter. That was the only time I have seen Sven annoyed and, even then, it amounted to nothing more than a little shake of the head and an exasperated smile at his next press conference.
IEK: Is the apparent 'tension' between Mancini and the board regarding transfers going to develop into anything more serious?
DT: I've tried to make the point that it's not unique for a man in high position to have issues with his chief executive. But it's still not particularly healthy and there's also a fair bit of stuff that hasn't been reported. It's all very complex but Mancini, in short, doesn't rate them. He doesn't like the way they have handled his transfer business, a lot of the decisions they have made and the overall structure behind the scenes. There have been all sorts of issues about who should have control over, for example, the medical side and whether Mancini should have the power to dismiss people, hire his own staff, and run it all how he wants. Can it be fixed? Yes, of course it can. It's not a brilliant situation but, again, it can happen, particularly in football. A lot of the best managers are also the biggest control freaks.
IEK: How do you think City will cope with the FFP rules?
DT: There seems to be a feeling throughout the game that Uefa don't mean it when they say they will throw clubs out of the Champions League for not complying - but City have been taking it all really seriously, almost to the point of an obsession. The first thing they need to do is get the wage bill down but it's not that easy, for example, to sell Wayne Bridge when he earns £90,000 a week. Even when all the fringe players - Bridge, Adebayor, Santa Cruz, Bellamy, Onuoha etc - have gone, there are still going to have to be cuts, but the Etihad deal will obviously help the process.
IEK: 'Sky sources understand' - A line that sends Twitter crazy like no other. I presume all journos have their sources. Do they tend to be the same person? Is information strategically leaked out via trusted methods? Have you ever written a story based around a questionable source?
DT: 'Sources' can mean a variety of different people - the player, an agent, a club press officer, a chairman, a chief exec etc. People generally don't want to go on-the-record these days so they brief quietly and strategically in the background and, for the journalist, you then have to use your judgment to decide whether it's decent information, and whether the person telling you is credible. The problem sometimes is that there is a lot of misinformation out there, often put out by the clubs. United, for example, have repeatedly told us behind the scenes this summer that they are not in for Sneijder. It's been emphatic and it's come from the very top of the club. Yet Ferguson has briefed one journalist that the contract is on the table. So who do you believe? Managers lie. Players lie. Agents lie. Spin-doctors have been hired - by clubs, players, even some agents - and sometimes you listen to them and you know they are just lying through their teeth. If you take everything at face value in football, you won't get very far. You just have to weed out the bullshitters and find the people you can trust.
IEK: On a personal level, how do you cope with the constant barrage of abuse from football fans, and the frequent accusations of bias and so on?
DT: You know what you're going to get if you write a story that will not be popular. You're biased against (delete where applicable) City/United/Liverpool/Chelsea/Arsenal. You're in the back pocket of City/United/Liverpool/Chelsea/Arsenal. You're a Rag/an ABU/a Munich/a Bitter. The messenger will be shot. Several times.
It can get a bit weird sometimes. Some guy outside the ground before the first day of last season was handing out photocopied sheets showing the faces of 'anti-City journalists.' I've had journalism students abusing me on Twitter at times, which is always interesting. There was another guy, a United fan, who asked me to retweet his blog one Friday (I did) and by the Sunday he was calling me a **** because I'd casually said something he didn't like about Nani. But it's almost always anonymous, and quite often the same six or seven people. And, besides, I'm sure the players get far worse.
IEK: And finally, you're a Forest fan - the rumours have Guidetti and Assulin linked. Thoughts? Happy with McClaren too?
DT: We did ask about Guidetti a week or two ago. Assulin was mentioned too, but the call was essentially about Guidetti and the feedback was that Mancini rated him highly and didn't want to let him go, particularly when there was still the confusion about Tevez's situation. In fact, one of Mancini's issues with the board is that they took so long sorting out a new deal for Guidetti last season and almost lost him over the summer.
As for McClaren, I'm sceptical. I covered England when he was the manager and it was just awful – Patridgesque awful, right from the fake smile to the see-through attempts to get in with certain journalists (handing out Christmas cards at one point). We haven't started the season well - a 0-0 draw against Barnsley and then one penalty kick away from being knocked out of the Carling Cup by Notts County - and I'm not hugely optimistic of promotion. The Championship are bringing in their own FFP and our budget is being slashed accordingly. It's a shame. I'm biased but I think a lot of people would like Forest back in the Premier League. We took an average of over 2,000 fans away from home last season - second only to Leeds - but it's been a long time since we were last up and the memories - this, ahem, wasn't bad http://bit.ly/qAoBdR - are fading now. Maybe next year . .
---------------------------------------------------------
I found Danny's opinions on the alleged tension between the board and Roberto Mancini particularly interesting. Having initially not known what to make of this and being rather apprehensive, i've (probably naivelly) come full circle in my thoughts. I'm not overly concerned. As Danny quite rightly pointed out, control freaks can often be great managers, take Sir Alex Ferguson, Fabio Capello (long before his England fiasco) and Jose Mourinho for example. They're all notoriously dictatorial in their methods. Roberto's stubbornness points towards the actions of a man who wants to prove himself - one who wants to win the league, and importantly one who wants to leave a long-lasting legacy at this club. He's in it for the foreseeable future it seems, and this is re-assuring. Whilst there will be flare ups, yes, and there will be disagreements along the way this is all part and parcel of being at a club where expectations are lofty. Fortunately our owners are very measured people and they understand this. They are more than aware of the need for stability and i'm confident they won't let any respectful disagreements of opinion cause any serious ruptures. They will be fair as long as progress on the pitch continues acceptably. They want to ensure that these continue to be exciting times for the club, and I see no reason why that won't be the case. Might want to strap yourself in though, could get a little bit rocky on the way...
Once again, thanks to Danny for taking the time out to talk to me. I hope you enjoyed the interview.
The mancityfans.net football forum
The BEST FORUM in all the land and all the world
