by Kevin Henning
And now it’s a full blown crisis. Manchester City, Champions of England, top of the Premier League, the only unbeaten professional side in the country, the best defensive record in the league have been knocked out of arguably the trickiest ever Champions League ‘Group of Death’.
In this morning’s papers, on the radio and on Sky Sports News, journalists who really should know better are pondering and probing as to whether the other Roberto will follow Di Matteo in the managerial sack race. Even Jose Mourinho, the man who had the audacity to refer to Arsene Wenger as a voyeur yet simply cannot resist poking his unwanted nose into other clubs’ business, has hinted that he believes Mancini should be given the bullet. Fortunately for everyone associated with Manchester City Football Club, the man who came from Italy is fully aware that in the eyes of the supporters, he is still the man to drive this club forwards after a huge show of support whilst Mourinho stalked up and down the touchline wondering why he isn’t shown the same level of love in Madrid.
In all honesty, it is a disappointment that City haven’t progressed beyond the group stage for a second consecutive year. That the club will probably finish without a win from this campaign and therefore will have the lowest points haul from any English side in Champions League history will hurt but let’s look at the positives and the ways in which City can improve the next time the Champions League rolls around and try to make it third time lucky.
In the two seasons so far, City will have played a dozen matches after the meaningless trip to Dortmund next month. In that time, City have only played Spanish, Italian, German and Dutch opposition. We’ve never been drawn against an FC Cluj, a BATE Borisov nor a Dynamo Zagreb. Should we complete Group D without a win, we’ll still have won a quarter of the twelve matches we have played so far. We’re still unbeaten on home soil.The mistakes that have resulted in dropped points at the Bernabeu, the Amsterdam Arena as well as the Etihad Stadium surely can’t be repeated too many more times. The match officials that have robbed us of crucial desicions against Bayern Munich last season and Ajax this may finally accept that we are amongst the European elite, aren’t going away and begin to treat us as such.
What we need to learn is not to give home sides an early lead in front of partisan crowds. This gives both the home team and the fanatics in attendance an enormous lift and we have often failed to recover once a goal down. City also need to consider the surge in confidence they would recieve from going in front during home matches. Napoli, Villareal, Borussia Dortmund, Ajax and Real Madrid have all benefitted from City’s sluggish starts in Manchester but in each of these games, Mancini’s men have recovered to gain at least a point. Five out of six games at home in other words where the visitors have drawn first blood. These are statistics that need to be changed if we are to enjoy the competition that would rather see two thousand loyal supporters locked out of a stadium each matchday, than trim a few inches from the advetising boards.
The final lesson that City need to take on board is a controversial one. Time and time again last night we saw Madrid players cut the flow of the game up by falling down, thus stopping the quest for a winner in full flow only to spring back to their feet untroubled and carry on with the game. Do City need to go in front and then play clever? Maybe. As the game approached injury time last night, one wisened chap sat a few seats away in the South Stand beautifully noted Pepe rolling around on the floor and announced to anyone who cared to listen – “That’s the one thing we need to learn from this year’s Champions League. Some call it gamesmanship, some call it professionalism, some call it a lack of sportsmanship – I refer to it as fucking cheating but there’s no doubt we have to become good at it.”
Of course City need to learn and move on and a third season of early exits would be a tremendous blow, but if the sky blues can kick on and successfully defend their Premier League crown then all will be well again in Mancini’s garden.
A crisis is dependant on a number of variables. Sure someone like Bolton would love this ‘crisis’. But when Mancini has spent £291,750,000 on transfers, and City are spending 120% of income on wages alone, on top of the money already spent by Sheikh Mansour, then failing to win a Champions League group game could be called a crisis. Failing to get out of the group again, for a second season running could be called a crisis.
I wouldn’t call that the trickiest ever Champions League group either, but regardless, you have to beat the best to be the best. In ’99 there was a group the consisted of treble chasing German champions (that year) Bayern Munich, current Spanish Champions Barcelona, treble chasing English champions (that year) Manchester United and Danish champions Brondby. I would argue that this group was harder, but I guess an element of subjectivity is applied. I don’t need to remind you who won the Champions League in ’99, navigating this group, Inter Milan, Juventus and Bayern in the process.
Outside of the City bubble, Mancini’s tactical ineptitude is evident, who brings on Gareth Barry for Aguero when you’re chasing a goal to stay in the Champions League.
Fortunately for the rest of us that ‘envy’ the problems at the Etihad, we can be safe in the knowledge that it looks to be a secure position he has there. It’s one thing throwing £300m worth of talent at a poor opposition that has a total wage budget of what Tevez alone will earn a year, hoping they can carve you out enough victories to win you a league title, but it is quite another when you have to be tactically astute enough to navigate Europe’s elite in the Champions League. He lost his job at Inter Milan due to his failure to produce the elite trophy. If he doesn’t deliver it next year I believe he will suffer the same fate.
While I agree Mancini doesn’t have a glowing champions league record, the rest of his career is quite admirable, he won inters first trophy in a long time, and city’s first in 44 years, the fact that the city fans were chanting his name at the end of the game should be enough of a message to the owner that they’re quite happy with their manger, city’s current wage bill is actually 70% of their income, still too high I’m sure most fans would agree but with investment in youth and infrastructure this will likely decrease over the coming years.
City have come a very long way in a very short space of time, the likes of which football will probably not see again, in this country anyway, however they currently pull in the fourth highest gate in the country and will more than likely increase the stadiums capacity in the future, as a burnley fan I have my reasons for a grudge against city after they were 5-0 up against us after 45 painful minutes at turfmoor. However I don’t begrudge city where they are now, they are a big club and their fans deserve to taste success after having to watch united dominate the game for such a long time.
city have had to become used to being disliked, as have most successful teams over the years, but lets not any of us pretend that if it was our club sheike monsour had chosen we wouldn’t be loving it right now.
So to sum it all up I don’t think crisis is a word that could be applied to manchester city.
In May 2012 it was reported that Manchester City had a turnover of £153m to support its £174m wage bill. If there are more up to date figures released in the 6 months prior to this, then I stand corrected.
Ha ha “it was reported” by who? The beano? Try looking at the last set of accounts the CLUB released. It was reported elvis is still alive in Memphis, doesn’t make it true Adam!
anyones guess what flavour of ‘bitter’ city hater adam is (my money is on new bitter from the borough of trafford near manchester for what it’s worth) ?
“I wouldn’t call that the trickiest ever Champions League group” then uses a group from the 90’s containing teams that are good now but were distinctly mediocre then, must try harder.
We’ll see how your team do against dortmund or madrid in due course, looking forward to it.
Adam, we all questioned whether Mancini had lost his marbles last season when, needing a win at Newcastle keep alive our Premier League dreams, he brought Nigel de Jong on. We all know now that it was to release Yaya Toure and how it ended up.
Are you honestly claiming that Brondby and the Barcelona of ’99 were in the same category as Ajax and today’s Real Madrid? Wow. Plus you’d been trying and failing for 6 years to make an impact in Europe’s elite competition before that but were constanly failing against such European luminaries as Gothenburg, Galatasaray and Torpedo Moscow. Not forgetting Borussia Dortmund of course.