Re: The Football Chat (cont) : Wed Mar 21, 2012 10:25 am  

Must win game for city tonight, must win. They simply can't afford to lose.

They must stay within at least 3 points of man united up until the derby game. If anythng more than a 3 points gap develops between now and the derby game, they've blown it. Because even if they did manage to win, United would simply win both their games after that, maintain the gap and claim the title. A similiar type of thing i recall has happened in title races with chelsea in recent years. (Not last year) Where United have gone to chelsea towards the end of the season, chelsea have pegged them back and everyones said ''my god united are going to blow it!!!'' But they've won their games thereafter maintained a gap and won the title.

City will need to win most of their remaining games to win the title because United will hardly drop any points now.

Re: The Football Chat (cont) : Wed Mar 21, 2012 4:14 pm  

lefty goldblatt wrote:

What's that I can smell?

Cows?

Sheep?

nah....it's bull5h1t

Which bit is bull5h1t? The bit about Mourinho or city being top before Utds next game? The rest of it is factual. Whether you care to accept it or not is down to you I suppose.

Re: The Football Chat (cont) : Wed Mar 21, 2012 4:25 pm  

Dita's Slot Meter wrote:

If you fail this year, it won't be because of the squad you have, yours is significantly better than United's, but it will be because Fergie is a top boss and Mancini isn't.

As a Wire fan, surely you can see alarming similarities between City at present and Wire in those dark days before Simon Moran realised he needed a top coach to get the best out of the great squad he had assembled, with his hard earned cash?

You can't make a comparison if they're not alike i.e. it took Fergie longer than a couple of seasons to win the league and he was backed with money, albeit not the same war chest as Mancini. You then make a comparison with Tony Smith who, if I'm not mistaken, hasn't won the league with Warrington yet. Why do you extend a different level of expectation and satisfaction to Tony Smith than you do with Mancini, given that (in RL terms) Smith has been giving plenty of financial backing from Moran? By your own standards you're effectively saying Smith has failed because you more or less said that if Mancini doesn't win it this year, in his second full season he'll have failed. If you're saying that Smith hasn't failed then it's very difficult to see how you can state that Mancini has if City don't go home with the league this year. After all, what did Smith win last year?

Re: The Football Chat (cont) : Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:43 pm  

Karlos13 wrote:

Which bit is bull5h1t? The bit about Mourinho or city being top before Utds next game? The rest of it is factual. Whether you care to accept it or not is down to you I suppose.

I love the FACTUAL bit of City's season needing rescuing, despite there being a quarter of a season to go, and being 1 point behind IF they win tonight.

How the club has had to go on hands and knees to beg Tevez to come back and "rescue" us. Tevez has a marketable value. If he doesn't play, his value will decrease even more. City need to get him in the shop window to sell him, hence gametime. Tevez will not be at City come August.

Oh, and our forward line are really lacking goals, aren't they?, with 3 of them in the top 10 Prem Div scorers.


Whether you care to accept THESE points, I really couldn't give a stiff one

Re: The Football Chat (cont) : Wed Mar 21, 2012 6:02 pm  

McClennan wrote:

You can't make a comparison if they're not alike i.e. it took Fergie longer than a couple of seasons to win the league and he was backed with money, albeit not the same war chest as Mancini. You then make a comparison with Tony Smith who, if I'm not mistaken, hasn't won the league with Warrington yet. Why do you extend a different level of expectation and satisfaction to Tony Smith than you do with Mancini, given that (in RL terms) Smith has been giving plenty of financial backing from Moran? By your own standards you're effectively saying Smith has failed because you more or less said that if Mancini doesn't win it this year, in his second full season he'll have failed. If you're saying that Smith hasn't failed then it's very difficult to see how you can state that Mancini has if City don't go home with the league this year. After all, what did Smith win last year?

Smith hasn't failed when you see where he has took Wire from and to where they now are, when you consider the competition and also the salary cap.

Mancini will have, because he has had a massive advantage over the competition....The last time anybody had this type of advantage was Mourinho at Chelsea (2 titles) and Dalglish at Blackburn (1 title).

A half decent manager would have this title tied up by now.

Re: The Football Chat (cont) : Wed Mar 21, 2012 7:40 pm  

Dita's, to even suggest that RM isn't a half decent manager, is ridiculous

City have played fantastically well (for most of) this season.
All teams suffer dips in form, City have
All teams suffer poor performances
All teams suffer dreadful refereeing performances (City more than most this season).
United are seasoned title contenders, they were NEVER going to go away

Mancini has won 4 national cup competitions, for 4 separate clubs.
Add to this, a hat-trick of Serie As (don't give me any of that "watered down" Italian season cobblers...the league still needs to be won).
This is a fantastic CV for any manager.
The money is an irrelevance. Dalglish has been given a bucketful of money to spend, and has "spunked it up the wall" to a certain extent. It takes a good manager to spend money, AND THEN, get the players to perform. Mancini has done this.
Mancini was only sacked by Inter, due to them not winning the CL, but hey-ho there were plenty of teams at the time that were better than Inter in Europe.

Mancini IS a fantastic manager

Re: The Football Chat (cont) : Wed Mar 21, 2012 8:38 pm  

Roddy B wrote:

Alex Del Piero rolling back the years against Milan. Would love to see Juve back at the top.

Juve are my favourite 'foreign' team and they're doing better than everybody expected in Conte's 1st season as coach.I think most Juve fans would have been happy getting back into the champions league this season but it looks like they'll push Milan all the way in the league and after last night they've got a coppa italia final to look forward to.One of the reasons for the return to form is the new ground,it's a lot better playing infront of a 40,000 crowd thats next to the pitch every home game than playing in the old stadium.

Re: The Football Chat (cont) : Wed Mar 21, 2012 8:53 pm  

Dita's Slot Meter wrote:

Smith hasn't failed when you see where he has took Wire from and to where they now are, when you consider the competition and also the salary cap.

Smith took Warrington (who despite their lowly position must have averaged being in the top half of the table for the past twenty years) to third (which is their highest position for nearly those same twenty years). Mancini took a team which had finished tenth the year before and finished fifth (think that was more or less the same as where he took over). Next year he moved them up to third, this a team which was brand spanking new not only broke into the top three which was their highest finish since I was a lad (and the first FA Cup since before then). This year it looks like he should be good for a minimum of second possibly first.

I'm not saying what either has done is easy but I would like to suggest, you know, just throwing it out there, is to succeed in football (specifically the Premier League too) is generally far harder than it is in rugby league, based on a simple fact that the competition is so much more intense i.e. millions play, watch and coach the game. Millions. So if we accept that it is harder then we have to accept the monetary advantages City's position gives him. Is it enough to say that you can basically buy the league?

Your answer suggests that if you just throw enough cash that way things will miraculously happen on their own. When the environment is as competitive as football is that will not work. It requires good management to get the very best out of those resources. In that way football is probably closer to Formula One in that it takes millions of pounds of investment into each squad/car to the point of you might have to spend £50m to fine tune your team to win it. In Super League we've just seen the Pies basically win a title off the back off one pretty brilliant wonder kid. I know the defence played its part but no Tomkins, no title and probably no cup. At the top end of the Premier League one player does not an entire difference make like it can do in SL. It's getting harder in SL and you have the salary cap too but I don't think there's a enough in that to say it means Smith is significantly more successful. You might even want to say that Mancini has done it speaking a foreign language with players for whom English isn't their first language either. Perhaps that makes the comparison a lot closer than most would prefer to consider.

Personally, I think Smith and Mancini have been a success. Has Mancini been successful enough? If they don't win the league this year but finish second I'd like to see him stay to see if he can build that incredible home form into something special. I know the criticisms levied against him but next year will be his third year and we should be able to reap the rewards for the change in culture he's tried to bring on the field (I don't recall Mourinho's side being as entertaining as City at their best - I know some will disagree).

Of course, all this is irrelevant if he guides us to the title this year.

Re: The Football Chat (cont) : Wed Mar 21, 2012 9:10 pm  

Lucky goal from chelsea.

Everything falling man uniteds way in the title race.

Re: The Football Chat (cont) : Wed Mar 21, 2012 9:38 pm  

Not now