Dameerto wrote:Ted Hughes wrote:Signings haven't been the problem & most of them have done ok & will be better next season. Navas, Fernandinho Negredo & Demichelis were a big part of last season's title win & I doubt we would have even got close without them. Bony looks like he will be a good asset, Fernando, Mangala & Jovetic have shown enough to suggest they could be perfectly ok if given time.
But if Kompany, Yaya, Fernandinho, Zaba, Silva, Aguero, Dzeko had been consitsently up to the mark this season, we wouldn't have a problem at domestic level.
They are the players we need to perform if we are going to win titles & they have only done it in short spells. A lot of it may be connected with the World Cup etc, but it doesn't change the fact that the heart of the team hasn't performed.
It's unlikely the ones who remain next season will have such an iffy year, whoever the manager.
That's not the point (about signings being the problem) - the point is who gets the money to spend, our two Spaniards or Pellegrini. Best case for Pellegrini it will almost certainly be his last season with us as he sees his contract out, so the summer window could well be a look to the future (and not an indulgence for the boss).
At a club like City, since the takeover at least, I don't think there is that much difference between the managers' signings & the club's signings; they both have the same ideas for the most part (just some like to blame others when things go wrong). They give the manager a list of club scouted players to choose from, he picks the targets in order, we try to sign them & then the manager is allowed one or two of his own pets to add.
Of course in Swales' day, we could have a long ball merchant manager one season, replaced by a midfield obsessed bore the next, then an attacking cavallier nutcase, then a counter attacking nutcase, then a winger fetishist etc etc & the whole thing just made no sense, as one set of players signed by one manager, has no real place in the plans of the next one. (Which would be exactly the case if Simeone came in & would be a total pisstake of all the previous planning imo). But now we have a style of play to aim for.
It's down to the quality available & the balance between short term & long term, but if you give Pellegrini & Txiki £200m to spend on two players, if they end up being mistakes, they will likely be the same mistakes & quite likely the same mistakes Pep or Ancelotti would make. Even if they would all likely blame someone else in their autobiographies!
It seems we want to evolve into a more high pressing attacking style as a club, so the future players we sign will probably fit that profile, perhaps with the occasional manager's pet player thrown in.
The big thing for me, is the day we stop having to buy squad players & instead use our own. Most of the 'big' players we have signed, have been a big success, not many ave missed ( jury is still out on Mangala, but he may eventually turn out fine as well). A fair few of the squad players have been crap, & quite a few more, average.
Those jobs should all be done by homegrown players.