Tuesday 14 September 2010

'The problem is we keep giving gifts away'

That's Roberto Mancini talking after the Blackburn game. He goes on to say that he hopes 'we have finished giving gifts away until Christmas now.' Well, quite.

I know that it's rather out of vogue to explain football matches through events rather than patterns and systems, but I have no doubt that had Carlos Tévez scored against Sunderland we would have seen the game out, and had Joe Hart just knocked that ball out for a throw then we would have beaten Blackburn. No doubt at all.

It's our own unforced errors which put us on five points rather than ten.

Had it been problems of cohesion and synergy that had been dragging us down, well, that would be expected. (We have looked marginally more cohesive than I expected thus far, although there's work to do here.) But individual errors? What is the point of spending the annual GDP of American Samoa on footballers if you don't eliminate things that would embarrass my Sunday league team?

1 comment:

budakon said...

Yes agreed that it has been a very frustrating start so far but not one that I am too worried about just yet. But then I probably said the same last year after the first couple of draws that just went on and on.

I'm sure that part of the City DNA makes us a little optimistic at the start of the season but with the sure knowledge that it will all go wrong before too long.

However, this year I am genuinely impressed with the manner of our play, especially since it has been achieved without any decent full-back playing (apart from Micah's one good match. We definitely look more fluid and cohesive and more powerful. We saw it all click into place at Liverpool and I am pretty sure that we will be seeing more of those performances soon enough.