The Premier League Owl
Told you.
The press are desperate to lay into Roberto Mancini, he’s been too successful here and his progression up the league has been too easy – so here’s The Mirror trying to throw a spanner in the works.
Roberto Mancini is facing a battle to head off a dressing-room mutiny at Manchester City.
Mancini summoned his players in to City’s training ground on Thursday morning for an inquest into their 3-1 Champions League loss to Ajax, despite the squad having not arrived back from Holland until 1am.
Several senior City players have become disillusioned with the Italians approach, culminating in their humiliating 3-1 Champions League defeat at Ajax.
The lack of progress in the Champions League is disappointing, but this is another example of the press wilfully misinterpreting something for the sake of a story – a couple of players speaking honestly post-match does not amount to a ‘mutiny’. Frustration is part of the game, but until you see Joe Hart, Yaya Toure and Sergio Aguero sitting around a burning oil drum outside Carrington, then it’s probably best to dismiss the suggestions that this squad is going militant.
As I said here on Wednesday night, the Champions League is about incremental improvement – English sides have to adjust to it before they succeed in it, regardless of the depth of their squads or the success they may have enjoyed domestically.
Don’t underestimate quite how much the media enjoy a managerial controversy at a big club, and the lengths to which they’ll go to create that reality. Manchester City are still the defending Champions, and Mancini still delivered that title – remember that before we all get terribly over-excited about some disappointing continental results.
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“Don’t underestimate quite how much the media enjoy a managerial controversy at a big club, and the lengths to which they’ll go to create that reality.”
Nail on head mate, but sadly the monster that is the media creates a tsunami; coupled with the belief of fickle fans out there who want success yesterday, it nigh on forces clubs to sack managers due to the public media embarassment.