Can I just ask, Saddened, why weren't you calling for Fergie to be sacked when he went out of the groups (to a very weak group) and came second in the league? Do you think those targets were pre-agreed with the board?
This is where football has become 'mad'. Mancini walked into a club steeped in mediocrity, he took them to a cup win and won the league with them. This season he's struggled, he's 'lost the dressing room' and lost the support of the board. How on earth does this stuff even happen? The man should be worshipped as a messiah, he brought success to a club in such a short window, yet what he gets in return is betrayal. I don't rate him that highly as a manager, and Citeh were only going to get worse under him as the players clearly didn't like him, but how does it even reach that point? And how can so many fans of other clubs look in and say "yeah, he's failed, sack him", when they know full well if somebody came to their club and won them the league, they'd be jizzing for decades over it.
The answer to the very first question I asked will be very predictable, Fergie wasn't sacked because he's untouchable, he's had relentless success and there was no way United were going to sack him, but how can any other manager gather a similar level of success if clubs, players and fans aren't going to back them, even when they do bring success? Just because Citeh have spent money, it doesn't give them a divine right to be ahead of every team in the country, but that's predictably forgotten when people want to have a rant. City do have different goals, they want to win everything, so do Chelsea, United, Spurs and Arsenal, as well as all the other clubs in the Champions League. If you don't strengthen your team considerably (which City didn't do), you won't compete on all fronts. Fans of teams like Everton will never grasp what it's like to compete, or what the expectations are of a club that's expected to be competitive, so looking in from the outside, yeah, it seems dead dead simple, but it really isn't.
Pellegrini is a great pick as manager, but it won't take long for the nation to turn on him. "Why does he play two holding midfielders, he's so negative." If he doesn't hit the ground running, win the Champions League, go unbeaten in the league and give Everton a good match, he'll be destroyed by fans in unison.
