Arsenal News » Manchester City and Mancini. A match made in hell.

Yesterday I took a look at Liverpool.   Now about Manchester City.

They have joined Leeds United and Chelsea in imposing tough restrictions on who can get near the club – following the revelations about how they sacked Mark Hughes.  (Leeds ban papers who report on the legal battles of K Bates, or report on the fact that no one knows who owns the club.  Chelsea are implementing tight controls in the light of the latest Terry scandal.)

According to many sources Mancini is the greatest manager Inter Milan have had in the last 30 years.   But as Evelyn Waugh would have said, “up to a point”.  (See “Scoop” if you want a real insight into newspapers in the inter-war years).

The problem for Mancini’s history is what else was going on at the time that he was a manager.

Let’s take his first championship winning season at Inter, 2005-06.  AC Milan were deducted 30 points that season.  Juventus actually won the title (15 points above Inter) but had it taken away from them.

Now on to 2006-07.   Milan were deducted 8 points, Fiorentina 15,  Reggiana 11 points, Lazio 3 points.  Juve were in Seria B.

So 2007-8.  Everyone was back, except by then, Inter as the new champions had been able to pick up any one they wanted from the disgraced clubs.  Juve were particularly badly hurt because top stars don’t want to play in Seria B.

To show the scale of the disaster for Juve, Patrick Vieira, whom you may remember, left Juventus after one year, and went to Inter.  Juve got 5 million Euros less for him than they had paid a year earlier.  Others followed our Patrick in buggering off.

Thus when we look at Mancini’s record we may say that by having a record at Inter of winning over 60% of his matches with them that is a great result.  But for two of the three years of his success the clubs we might expect to challenge were weakened, and by the third year he had been able to build a team that he wanted, made of players who otherwise probably would not have been available at all, or certainly not at a price his club would be willing to pay.

Mancini is not unfamiliar with cloak and dagger transfers and strange doings.    As a player he joined Leicester in January 2001 with a contract until June.   His first game was against us (0-0)

But then, within a month he was off.  He was given a leave of absence for “personal reasons” and then phoned the club to say he had had enough and was not coming back.  The personal reasons turned out to be a coaching job with Fiorentina.

In 2004–05 rumours circulated that Inter had approached our man (sound familiar — rumours…)   By then he was with Lazio, and he suddenly left and went to Inter.

When things started to go wrong in 2008 (Inter were beaten by Liverpool in the Champs League) Mancini said he was on his way out.  But the club were having none of it, preferring to sack him because they wanted Mourinho.

So, where does that leave Man City? Probably with the manager they deserve, each side being very used to the breaking of contracts and doing deals behind each other’s back.

The problem for both parties however is that Manchester City want success and they want it now.  Mourinho was good at delivering fairly quickly from a standing start, as was Wenger.  Sir Alex F Word certainly didn’t hit the high spots straight off.  With Mancini, who knows.  Maybe he is hoping that Arsenal, Chelsea and Man U will all have points deducted.

As for the squad Mancini inherits, it is a semi-crazed affair – a mismatched bunch that don’t seem to be able to play together.

The basic problem is that if you pay £25 million for a player then you have a player who expects to be the king, playing every week, nurtured, caressed, loved.  You don’t expect to be criticised or dropped.  But the owners want success now.  “I don’t spend £400 million to come second” is the story, and they won ‘t waver from that.

The secondary problem that Manchester City has, is a total dependence on bought in players.  There is no youth or reserve system to speak of, and if you were playing in Manchester City reserves as a 20 year old would you hang around hoping to be given a chance?   The answer is probably no, because you know that £30 million will be spent on Johnny Foreigner who will come in ahead of you.

If you were 16 and a Manchester City, you’d be sending love letters to Mr Wenger every day.

So yes, Manchester City and Mancini deserve each other, and will undoubtedly muck each other around.   What a joy that we only have to watch this in humble amusement.

• Read about Arsenal’s endeavors 100 years ago in the book Making the Arsenal which follows Arsenal in 1910 through the diary of a Fleet Street journalist.
• Read what Arsenal Independent Supporters Assn said about “Making the Arsenal”

(c) Tony Attwood 2009