Never been one to hide from the flak There seems to be a pattern emerging for the big games whereby we start very slowly and get dominated by opposition who are far more motivated than we are. As well as the 3 CL games its been exactly the same at anfield and for the visit of Arsenal.If theres one thing i cant stomach watching,its the opposition wanting it more and im finding thats more often the case this season. What sort of performance was that from yaya?He was utterly dreadful and the lack of tactical nous shown by Mancini & the coaching team beggars belief. Its all well and good pointing out that we are champions and won the fa cup the season before but the pertinent question should really be whether he has done any more than any other run of the mill manager would given the same set of circumstances?Does anyone believe a Moyes or a Curbishley wouldve fared much worse?For whats its worth i believe fat sam wouldve won the league with that squad as would Rednapp. Saw his interview this morning on sky sports saying hes at fault for not preparing them properly.While many may believe thats ok to try to deflect the blame from the players,i thought it was a disgraceful thing for a manager to admit to yet again and his position is becoming untenable.
` Having said all of that, you've started doing a bit of a 'united' of late (bar last night). Not playing particularly well but nicking wins
Fair play for the response, i watched his interview last night and he looked kind of lost for words but then i thought maybe that was just because English isn't his first language. Fat sam couldn't win the league with anyone! even the barca team! Though i agree Moyes or Rednapp would have been right up there with your squad, Europe will always be a completly different ball park to the league though. You need to get the tactics spot on everytime and have a good team with lots of experience and a decent amount of luck, thats what is usualy required to win the Champs league. Out of interest if you do fail to qualify for the knockouts do you want your team to go for the Europa League?
Better learn quick, if you're not getting out of the group stages and not winning the Europa then your seeding isn't going to improve at all. Luckily Chelsea fluked a CL and Italy isn't much of a threat otherwise we'd be in danger of losing our 4th CL spot. That'd be a blow for Arsenal (and Liverpool's ambitions)
Not all that unlucky tbh. When you're the third seed every group is likely to be tough. City are arguably paying the price for their dash for success. Had they gone slow, and gotten a bit more established like Chelsea did pre Roman, they'd have a few more seasons in the Europa to boost their coefficient and be a number two seed. Even Spurs managed to get They've just gone into the CL far too early and it shows. Not necessarily - City got their highest ever annual coefficient last year despite not doing well in the CL or Europa. If they repeated that performance every year for the next four seasons, they'd have the 9th highest coefficient in Europe, and would've replaced Milan as a number one seed (Inter didn't quality for the CL this year) Nah, we're a long way off that happening. Our consistency will keep us in it - even tho' we aren't always getting our teams out of the group stage, we are doing enough to get them there in the first place which is more than can be said for the other top leagues. Udinese and Mönchengladbach both failed to make the group stages this year, so once again England and Spain are the only ones with four representatives in the groups. Even if we have another monumental cock up like last year, there's a limit to how much ground we can lose.
