The Italian has wasted no time putting his players through their paces, effectively cancelling Christmas as he works frantically on tactics before his first game in charge at home to Stoke City in the Barclays Premier League on Boxing Day.
City’s players did double sessions totalling 4½ hours on Monday and again yesterday as Mancini took a close look at the squad he has inherited from Mark Hughes, who was sacked on Saturday night after 18 months at the club.
They will undergo intensive training again today and tomorrow with a less gruelling session on Christmas Day. The players will then report to the team hotel in Manchester at 8pm later that day.
I'm pleased to hear this. One of the best rationales for replacing Hughes with Mancini is that Hughes did not quite have the profile to manage big players. His poor relationship with Robinho was no secret, and his relationship with Adebayor deteriorated as far over three months as that between Arsene Wenger and Manu did over three years. And so one could construct an argument that we need to get the best out of these big names, and that we could do that by bringing in a manager more sympathetic to them. It's not an argument I agree with, but it's not lunacy either and is certainly the sort of thing you can see a non-football specialist, whether Garry Cook, Khaldoon or Sheikh Mansour himself arguing.
And given Roberto Mancini's style and reputation as a player it would be easy to imagine that he would be that sort of manager - willing to indulge the big name stars in the hope that they grace us with a good performance here and there. This fear grows even more acute in the knowledge that Mancini's managerial mentor is Sven-Göran Eriksson, who, when City manager, was famously indulgent of Elano - best friend of our number one galáctico, Robson de Souza. Having City descend into some less classy version of the last days of Frank Rijkaard at Barcelona is something that seriously worried me. So I am delighted to hear that he's got the players working as hard as he does.
Even more of a relief is the testament of his former players at Lazio and Inter to exactly the same point. First Diego Simeone, who played for Mancini's Aquile side:
And then Esteban Cambiasso, who looks like Stephen Ireland but plays like Nigel de Jong, anchor of Mancini (and Mourinho's) Nerazzurri team:‘I would warn the Manchester City players that Mancini is very rigorous and serious in his work.
‘Any player who does not buy in to the work rate and the spirit of the team will be out, without a doubt.
‘These things are important to him. He is very open with his players but he is also very clear. He believes in team unity above anything else. He thinks that is the way to be successful. The players he has there at City will have to understand that.
"With Mancini the players can expect hard training.‘There will be a lot of ball work, a lot of tactical discussion and they will be asked to repeat certain plays over and over again. In some ways, the drills will be mechanical.
‘Mancini will do what is necessary until they get things right.‘I am convinced that Mancini’s style will be right for the Premier League and that City’s results will improve but there will be a lot of work for the squad to do on a daily basis.
6 comments:
cambiasso is a bit different to De jong, he's a superb passer of the ball, he's creative and very hard working. I would love to see him in our team, but that's not likely!
Mancini's relationship with Robinho and Adebayor will inevitably deteriorate, as it did with Hughes, as their egos are substantially greater than their effectiveness on the pitch. Perhaps the only issue with Hughes' perceived lack of profile was that he didn't have the clout with Khaldoon to send Robinho packing, along with Elano and Jo.
So unlike Hughes he's a bit of a task master and a stickler for discipline? Hmmm.
Bloody hell TLDORC. I know that you really thought Hughes was the man for City - so did I, at one point - but your pessimism regarding Mancio is absurd. The man has won many trophies as a manager. Hughes hasn't won any. I think it's a great deal tougher to manage Inter than most of the British press acknowledge (and I speak as an expert on Serie A). Inter is probably the second toughest managerial job in Europe, but you'd think - according to some of the stuff that's appearing in the press at the moment - that he is underqualified compared to someone whose previous gigs are Blackburn Rovers and Wales!
As for the idea that he's a soft touch, you could only think that if you were ignorant of who he signed and how he dealt with presidential favourites such as Adriano and Recoba. Mancio's teams were unfailingly tough and hard working, whatever their other faults.
mancini may not talk hard, but his inter team sure played tough, hard working, super-organised football. with the best will in the world, for all the rhetoric, hughes never organised his mob into anything greater than the sum of it's parts... we were still very lax off the ball... perhaps the bigger problem was the shape of the team. if you spread out your front players, put both wingers on the touchline, and push them up the pitch, then you inevitably leave bigger gaps behind. we pursued this tactic as it suited bellamy, swp, tevez, we could charge into the space on the break... but it is asking far too much of our defence and midfield pair to cover the gaps. watch for a much more 'compact' shape in the coming weeks, with one of the wingers tucking in, the gaps between the midfield, defence and attack becoming much smaller, and more of an emphasis on the team, less reliance on moments of brilliance from individuals. hopefully.
Does the size of our pitch play a role here?
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