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On the 19th of December 2009, As Mark Hughes waved to the Manchester City crowd after a Disjointed 4-3 win over a dour Sunderland side, it is alleged that Roberto mancini was in the then “City of Manchester Stadium” after being awakened from slumber by Khaldoon al Mubarak to Improve the fortunes of Manchester city..
His Mandate???.. 1, Qualify the team for the Champions league
2, Win a Domestic trophy
3, Win the EPL
4, European domination must follow.
Enter cool Blue and white striped Scarves and model like Italian suits.. Mancini carried his own style wherever he went to..
Good thing too, because it seemed to work at first glance with four wins on the bounce after the good looking but not so grey haired Italian began to strut his stuff.
But on May 5th 2010, the first objective was not reached as Peter Crouch’s goal for Tottenham ensured that Manchester city would fail to Qualify for the UEFA champions league and would have to play Europa league football….
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In the 2010/2011 season, Mancini asked, and players were granted. In came Jerome Boateng, David Silva, James Milner, Yaya Toure, Alexander Kolarov and Maverick Mario Balotelli..
City would proceed to qualify for the Champions league after, rather Ironically, Peter Crouch scored again, in his own net this time.
This was quickly followed by a Domestic trophy in the form of the FA CUP which City won after Overcoming stoke city in the Final…two objectives down, two to go.
2011/2012 brought about the additions of Kun Aguero, Gael Clichy and Samir Nasri..(Owen Hargreaves anyone??) as Premier league domination was the agenda. To put it simply, it happened. City won the Premier league albeit on the last day, They won the premier league..simple… Objective count ..Three down one to go.
It’s taken me awhile to get to the crux of this article but I wanted to set a tone in the mind of the reader..
In Mancini’s two and a half years up to this point he had participated in the Europa league and the Champions league with city…. Objective 4 was proving elusive.
Mancini’s Night terrors had followed him across the border; I say this because after four years in Inter Milan between 2004 and 2008, Mancini had won:
Look closely, Something’s missing eh?
Sadly, after all this success…..He was a Failure to media and fans alike..
Just two days ago, Objective four turned from pigeon to three pronged Albatross as City have once again been ousted from the Uefa Champions league.
To identify the problem, I will attempt to form a paper trail so that we investigate properly the reasons behind these so called failures..We will go back to his inter days where it all started.
In 2004-2005, inter breezed through a group comprising Werder Bremen, Anderlecht and Valencia..Toppled porto in the second round but failed to get past main rivals AC Milan in the quarter finals going down over two legs by 5goals to nil..
Sad because in that moment, Adriano was emperor and Obafemi Martins could do multiple somersaults after goals.. Both these players contributed 12goals out of 18 that inter scored in the competition..
VERDICT: UNLUCKY
In 2005/2006 , Inter came first in Group H..The pool comprised of Rangers, Artmedia and Porto..
They went on to meet Ajax in the second round and a young marksman by the name of klaas jan huntelaar made life a tad difficult but inter progressed to meet Villarreal in the quarters..
Nobody knew why or how Villareal were winning games but they beat inter Milan..well not really, things ended 2-2 on aggregate..but villareal had scored an away goal at inter’s home ground in a 2-1 loss.. Adriano and Julio cruz were responsible this time for goals and they combined for 9 of the 14 inter scored in the competition..
VERDICT: DISAPPOINTING
I’m going to be cruel and write off the 2006 to 2008 seasons in which Mancini was Manager at Inter.. i believe that with ibrahimovic in your team, you will never win the Champions league.. He’s bad karma.
Inter’s bad discipline in this period cost them a tremendous amount of times as evidenced by the night at the mestalla in 2007 and materazzi and burdisso’s shenanigan’s in 2008 against Liverpool.
Moratti had seen it all..He fired Mancini.
Two years later, Mourinho won the thing.
In his two times playing the Champions league with Manchester city, Mancini and the club as a whole have been dealt terrible cards as punishment for their low co-efficients and (my own theory),their continued flouting of the UEFA financial fair play rules
2011: Bayern, Napoli and Villareal
2012: Real Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, Ajax.( All domestic champions of their respective leagues).
In his first trial, he garnered Ten points which is normally enough..but City still fell short…showing the very competitive nature of the group.
In This year’s edition, he has 3 points after 5games…
He never did this badly with inter..so why?..Then I compared the squads..
James milner, kolarov, Richards, Zabaleta, Rodwell, Nastasic, Savic
Karagounis, cruz, crespo, Chivu, ibrahimoviic, zanetti, Samuel, cordoba..
It became apparent that one set of players out of these two would know what to do in case of a meltdown.
Granted, City shouldn’t really be in this position but mancini works well with time..
If you ask me, I’ll say..The third time is a charm, Everydog has his day…
If you ask mancini how he wins title’s he’ll say “ its finished”.. When really, it never truly is…
Objective 4:…………………….
Kobi Okoye.
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