john68 wrote:Dub,
I don't think there is any residual bitterness about the previous manager. I do think that now people are doing what seemed to be suppressed by that accusation at the time...questioning CHANGE, whether it was necessary and whether the change made constituted progress.
Last season was considered by many to be a failed season, so it is wholly understandable with changes made and players brought in, that expectations should be a whole lot higher. The record shows that is patently not the case and we have at this stage gone backwards.
For all the whoopee and triumphalism about our attacking players, new attacking strategies and positive "go forward" philosophy, we have only scored 3 more goals at the same stage as last season and our goal difference is only 1 goal better.
Considering last season was considered a failed season, plus losing 3 games (compared to 0 losses last season), and the fact that we have 5 fewer points....it does seem that most of that unquestioning triumphal "whoop de doo" was a little misplaced.
Well mate, last season was considered a failure on reflection, not on prediction.
I would like to see who we had played at this point last season, the scores and also the champions league results thrown in, before we even go down the route of style.
Anyway, there was need for change because the manager lost the dressing room. If you don't like the guy they changed to based on the first to months of the season, that's fine, but tell us who we should have gone for, because Mancini was a goner. For all the reasons we've already debated countless times.
I was very unsatisfied with the Cardiff performance, the Hull performance and elements of the Bayern performance (taking into account how amazing they were).
I am more unsatisfied with the uncharacteristic fuck ups from individuals when we are completely dominating games. "Uncharacteristic" being a very operative word, because if it was "characteristic", the changes would have been made in the Summer transfer window.
This thread is about what elements of our poor performances are down to the manager we currently have. To me, that is mainly down to dressing room harmony and tactics, so I'm more than happy to discuss that.
I don't know what the harmony is like but based on how all of his previous players speak of him, I'm not concerned about it... yet.
Tactics - I wasn't happy about how his tactics in a few games - us lining up with two strikers away from home and against Bayern, when we should have been packing the midfield, being my main gripe - but he looks to have gotten wise to this and also has made some good reactive changes during games (Everton springs to mind).
Against Chelsea, I was impressed. Very impressed actually, because a game is about the 90 odd minutes and we were playing our toughest fixture and dominating.
He now knows that he is dealing with possible three players hitting bad the roughest patches since they arrived, but the market is closed so he has to depend, for now, on using his man management skills to build their confidence and try to iron out the mistakes between now and January.
As ever, we'll know after the Christmas run and the January window whether we are shit because of this man. Maybe he isn't the right man for the job - I certainly don't have any reason to want him out now based on what I've seen from him.
But anyone who tries to tell me that we shouldn't have gotten rid of Mancini and we made a mistake by hiring this guy, purely based on what we've seen so far... well, I would suspect an agenda more so than magnificent foresight.