You sometimes wonder - are City a team? Is there any sense of collective purpose? Or is it just a gathering of huge egos all playing for their own self promotion - not to mention an obscene amount of money, of course!
Interesting views on City. If you took away that lucky last minute recovery v QPR as well and you'd be looking at a side that has spent hundreds of millions to win just 1 f/a cup (as have Wigan and Portsmouth in recent years). No shame losing to Barca but that's 3 years in the C.L, out of the group stage twice and out at the last 16 this year. Compare that to us for example and we made 3 semi finals in 4 years post Roman. Something isn't quite right there.
"No shame losing to Barca but that's 3 years in the C.L, out of the group stage twice and out at the last 16 this year.
Compare that to us for example"
Compare that to the Goons and you have parity.
"Not really. We always make out of the group stages, without fail."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998–99_UEFA_Champions_League#Group_stage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999–2000_UEFA_Champions_League#First_group_stage
Fail.
I think you must have meant Spurs.
"Nice, you had to back 14 years to see the last time we failed to get of the group stages."
Fact is that I compared LIKE WITH LIKE.
FIRST 3 SEASONS in the CL for Citeh vs those of the Goons.
And Citeh can have no excuses, but the Goons can have some ??
To be fair to City, they've had some tough groups.
But hey've been poor away to rivals - wrong tactics by Mancini mainly in that you need to contain and play for a draw sometimes and he didn't. They played as if every game was a knockout cup tie and were exposed defensively. 1-2 v Napoli, 2-3 v Real Madrid, 1-3 v Ajax, 0-1 v Dortmund.
1-3 v Bayern Munich this season at home, but they had a much easier group this time.
Mourinho is a great manager and in many ways, I wish he'd been offered and taken the Utd job. But I don't think the club were comfortable with a manager who is happy to get 2-0 in front and then defend, which is Mourinho's staple tactic. Chelsea are consistently getting results and so there is no reason for complaint, but there is lack of style, even with stylish players in the team.