Mancini or Jose? It’s a no brainer

Posted Wednesday, April 04, 2012 by The Sun

Mancini or Jose? It’s a no brainer
WRONG MAN FOR THE JOB? ... faltering City boss Roberto Mancini

THE sands of time are running out for Roberto Mancini.

He was given £240million by Sheikh Mansour to win the Premier League — on top of the £180m that had already been spent on players.

Now Mansour and City chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarek will be weighing up whether Mancini should be granted one more season.

Personally, I believe he has taken it as far as he can.

Yes, there has been steady progress from fifth to third and now second (barring a Manchester United collapse).

And they won the FA Cup last season.

Yet in the context of the money lavished on the project, this is no more than would have been expected.

What wasn’t anticipated was the manner in which Mancini’s team would crack when the heat was turned up, the increasing in-fighting between coach and players and the way in which United have shown what attitude and real team spirit is all about.

The most important ingredient in winning championships is character.

This is usually reflected in away form.

You can knock teams over at home — which City are extremely good at — but it’s what you do out of the comfort zone that shows what a team is made of.

And here the statistics speak for themselves.

United — W12,D3, L1. City — W7,D4,L4.

Astonishingly, since their 6-1 thrashing of United at Old Trafford, City have taken just 12 points from a possible 30.

This suggests they don’t like it up ‘em. That too many of their players are homers.

And Mancini has not been able to do a thing about it.

The Italian has had almost two and a half years to build a championship-winning side. And yet he still appears to have come up short.

Compare this with Jose Mourinho, another manager blessed with limitless funds, at Stamford Bridge. In his first two years, Chelsea won back-to-back titles.

City fans will say that Mourinho had considerably more to build on seeing Chelsea had finished second the season before.

Yes, but Mourinho still knew what was missing. As such, he brought in Petr Cech, Ricardo Carvalho, Arjen Robben and Didier Drogba.

As for Mancini, he was not exactly building from scratch.

He already had Joe Hart, Micah Richards, Vincent Kompany, Pablo Zabaleta, Joleon Lescott, Kolo Toure, Gareth Barry, Nigel de Jong and Carlos Tevez.

He also decided he could do without Emmanuel Adebayor, Roque Santa Cruz, Shay Given and Wayne Bridge.

It was hardly a blank canvas.

To that he has added players valued at £230 million.

What’s gone wrong? Well, Stefan Savic was a bad buy, James Milner will never be anything more than support cast, David Silva has run out of steam, Yaya Toure hasn’t been the same since the African Nations Cup while Adam Johnson, one of the only threats out wide, is in and out of the side.

Edin Dzeko? An expensive enigma. Which leaves us with Tevez and Mario Balotelli.

And here, perhaps, we should look at Alex Ferguson for the self-help manual on how to deal with problem players and the circus around them.

Tevez did well enough at Old Trafford but, once his agent started to make outrageous demands, he shipped the Argentinian out. Just as important, he got his corrosive advisor off the premises.

But the poison would soon resurface at City despite Tevez’s huge popularity. Mancini’s pugnacious attitude didn’t help, either, and the final dug-out skirmish was inevitable.

All round, Mancini’s body language has been poor.

As for Balotelli, perhaps he was seen as the player to turn a good team into winners. Like Eric Cantona at United.

Except Ferguson could handle Cantona. Mancini, who should have known better, has more or less run out of excuses for Balotelli.

Mourinho got it right when he called the kid “unmanageable”. Certainly at this stage of his career.

City fans will claim they have missed Kompany and Lescott at a vital time. United, though, have suffered far more with long-term injuries to Nemanja Vidic, Darren Fletcher, Tom Cleverley and Antonio Valencia.

All this just highlights the job Ferguson has done this season, building an unbeatable team ethos among a squad that, on paper, doesn’t compare with City’s.

There is a real hunger — from the young players all the way through to Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs — while you get the impression that certain City players have just followed the pound notes.

It was well put the other day when Ferguson’s squad was described as more than the sum of their parts, Mancini’s less so.

In the end, it was down to what the respective managers could get out of them.

After City’s 3-3 draw with Sunderland, the official Bluemoon blogger wrote: “Be disappointed we dropped two points. Be disappointed we have handed the initiative to United. Be disappointed if we don’t come back to win it.

“But look at the bigger picture. The title is certainly coming and it’s coming soon.”

Yet City’s owners will be forgiven for thinking that if they couldn’t win the title this year what chance next?

This, remember, is the season when United are set to win their 20th championship with a team that even their own supporters regard as one of the weakest in Ferguson’s 25 years at the club.

The season when Chelsea went into serious decline and Arsenal imploded in the first month.

When Spurs, as ever, folded when the pressure was on.

The season when City didn’t have a better chance.

Sheikh Mansour will be asking his advisers one last question: would we do better under Mourinho than Mancini?