SOCCER ANGLES:The spotlight has got around to Roberto Mancini at Manchester City, and there may be trouble ahead for the Italian coach, writes MICHAEL WALKER
IT HAS been yet another of those bewildering, mesmerising weeks in English football. You start breathless on Monday morning and you finish breathless on Sunday night. In between you are hit with a procession of full-volume events you think must end soon but just keep coming.
Just about the only person pleased with this is Roberto Mancini and even he cannot bury himself inside that scarf much longer. But for all the rest of it, the Wayne Bridge-John Terry shenanigans, the Jose Mourinho-Carlo Ancelotti midweek sideshow, the Portsmouth debacle and the Fabio Capello-England HQ stories, Mancini would be a good deal more prominent.
For the record, City have played Stoke three times in the past fortnight and not won once. City’s other game in the period was a 0-0 home draw with Liverpool.
On the face of it, that looks okay, but those present said it marked a new low in top-flight football as entertainment.
That is not the Manchester City way. Mancini has now been in charge for 15 games since Mark Hughes’s December ambush. The first four, against Stoke (again), Wolves, Middlesbrough in the FA Cup and Blackburn, were all won.
There was praise in the air, which felt premature.
Since then they have won four games, one of which was at Scunthorpe in the FA Cup. Robinho has gone, perhaps forever, and so has this season’s League Cup.
Manchester United are in its final at Wembley tomorrow against Aston Villa. City had won the first leg of that absorbing semi-final and then lost cruelly to Wayne Rooney’s last minute header at Old Trafford when it seemed extra-time was there.
At least it looked a cruel exit. Step back from the emotion, however, and what you see is the team Mancini picked for what was always likely to be a siege encounter of a second leg. Look in particular at his defence, the centre of it, from where Rooney scored the winner.
Two months after his 19th birthday and 25 days after his full debut in English football, was Dedryck Boyata.
Age is not the sole criteria by which to judge a footballer but Boyata’s lack of experience was evident that night. It was a gamble that backfired.
That is a trite phrase, though. What defeat meant was City’s first major cup final for 29 years was again out of reach. For senior players such as Craig Bellamy, Shay Given and Carlos Tevez – the three best City players that night – another of their decreasing chances of silverware had passed. When you began to hear subsequently of stirring discontent within the camp, the surprise was far from total.
Four days later City were deemed to have rectified that result by winning at home in the Premier League against Portsmouth to move fifth in the table with a game in hand on fourth-placed Tottenham.
But having been at Eastlands that day, it was a false result. Portsmouth were every bit as good, or as bad, as City.
Only Vincent Kompany played well for the home team.
Mancini got away with some scrutiny that afternoon because the attention was on Portsmouth’s economic plight and the track-suit activities of their manager Avram Grant. Down in north London, United were hammering Arsenal 3-1.
But the pedestrian nature of City’s play was eye-watering. Apparently it has not been much better since, as the loss at Hull would confirm.
Then came Wednesday’s FA Cup exit at Stoke. If City’s season was not all about finishing fourth prior to then, it is now.
Can they do it? Not on current form. Liverpool are the one team in the top seven City have faced twice. Today they go to Chelsea, they have yet to go to Arsenal. Villa are yet to visit Eastlands, so too United in the league.
From afar it felt as if City were being clever giving Mancini a straightforward bedding-in, but the trouble with storing up trouble is that you store up trouble.
Yesterday we reached the stage, never a good sign, where Mancini denied he is already under pressure. He is said to be flat-hunting in Manchester but that could be buy-to-let.
Should City fall today at Stamford Bridge, there will again be enough sideshow to help conceal the Mancini issue.
There will be the sight of Wayne Bridge snubbing John Terry’s handshake in the obligatory pre-match team line-up.
Terry’s fragile form may then command some attention.
And who knows what Tevez will do. The Argentinian is back from South America after seeing his ill daughter, dismayed according to spokesmen with Mancini’s attitude.
At least Tevez is available, Emmanuel Adebayor isn’t. Patrick Vieira is another to have got himself sent off and suspended.
Manchester City are the richest club in the world. That’s how we think of them. This is a grand project that involves them staying in seven-star hotels prior to breaking the mould of the Premier League top four. That’s the plan. It feels two-star just now and Mancini could soon be checking out.
Special One may yet be Real gold
IT IS said that Manchester City would swoon in front of the mighty presence of Jose Mourinho. It is also said Mourinho will leave Inter Milan this summer. Put two and two together and you get a multi-million euro extravaganza.
That’s probably not what English or European football needs, another splurge by one club. But our concern about general finance are unlikely to be top of City’s oil men’s priorities.
These men need this to work or else it is simply money wasted. They have to buy gold in their next appointment, not take a punt. Regardless of how you view Mourinho as an actor, in football terms he is gold.
Chelsea were unlucky in the San Siro on Wednesday but it says something of the rebuilding job that Mourinho has done there since succeeding Roberto Mancini a season and a half ago that Inter could not just push Chelsea but beat them.
Lucio was man of the match. Mourinho bought him. Diego Milito scored the opener. Mourinho bought him. You still fancy Chelsea in the second leg in London but if he does depart Inter in June, Mourinho will have left an improved squad and team.
But it should be of further discomfort that Marca, the Spanish sports daily that sometimes acts as a message delivery service for Real Madrid, last Saturday revealed the price of the get-out clause in Mourinho’s Inter contract. It is €7.5 million. Heaven knows why Marca would print such a story three days after Real lost in Lyon in the Champions League.
