LAST DAYS OF A SEASON

Compare and contrast:

EXHIBIT (a)

EXHIBIT (b)

Ian Ladyman's article in The Mail

REVOLVING DOORS

The man with the Champions League halo

Time waits for no one in football. The various shades of dust are still settling on Manchester City's Retro Tribute FA Cup Final weekend, where the cup was lost against a side relegated three days later, in circumstances even Tony Soprano couldn't have made more complicated. There was no horse's head, but the blood letting has not stopped for three days and the rest of us have been left feeling like a finely sliced salami.


Outgoing manager, Roberto Mancini, leaving with the songs of thousands still ringing in his ears, has already begun to be painted in a different light, now that he has left the building. With the useful golden rule of never cross your assistant kit man added to an ever-lengthening list of things to be aware of as a football manager, tales of arrogance and autocracy now seep from the Etihad's walls like blood from a still warm corpse. He had a man, whose sole purpose in life was to wash his bicycle! He sat in restaurants in silence despite being in the company of esteemed British journalists! He forced innocent people to eat gnocci! He ignored the holistic approach and aimed at a kind of granular dictatorship of the mind. And the assistant kitman noticed all of this. The assistant kitman is now at Sunderland where his new best mate is Adam Johnson. He may well be a visionary of some kind.

With the door still swinging merrily on its battered hinges after the fulsome push it was given on Monday, we await the in-rush of air and what or indeed who might be carried in on its light yet powerful zephyrs. The Guardian, along with a sizeable and audibly chattering flock of journalistic sheep, has already chosen its man, witness the helpful little article already posted by Jamie Jackson on their website, entitled Five Things for Pellegrini to Put Right at City.

This has provoked a rash of material to be unearthed on the man himself. He can speak English, although this solely according to Graham Hunter's view through a swanky hotel's safety partition where he was seen "alone in conversation with Alex Ferguson for over an hour...". While this is certainly proof of a man's capacity to listen to what he thinks might be English, only time will give us the proper answer to this particular question. Maybe this need is an exaggerated one anyway. Whilst Luis Filipe Scolari failed at Chelsea partly owing to communication frailties, Mancini's English never progressed beyond passable and it didn't seem to hinder him too much. Although, maybe that was the reason for the pregnant silence before the gnocci were served.

Pellegrini, we are told, is not just the man, who built the fantastically entertaining Villareal side of Riquelme, Cazorla, and Forlan but also produced an excellent team and performance in his one season in charge of Real. Pep Guardiola went out of his way to emphasise how well his side had been chased to the line by Pellegrini's men. His most recent exploits at Malaga also reflect well on the man. Holding a grumbling squad of unpaid players together, he eventually got them to within seconds of knocking out the continent's new darlings, Borussia Dortmund, in that nail-chewing quarter final in the Ruhrgebiet. He is a man of tactics, a "coach", say Hunter, not a manager. This then is an individual, who can dovetail well with the "holistic" needs mentioned in the press release after Mancini's dismissal, a man more at home with the shaping of his football team than the frippery of today's massive football periphery.



Here is a man who inspires respect not through bullying but through inclusion. He appears tough. Riquelme, for all his talent, did not last at Villareal in the end, when he refused to buy into Pellegrini's vision. It was not an unwillingness to play beautiful football either. Pellegrini's teams have a fine reputation for that too. It was simply the installation of discipline and team ethic to make the vision come to fruition, which it did so spectacularly at El Madrigal. His Villareal side, packed with such talent as Ibagaza, Riquelme, Senna, a young Matias Fernandez, Capdevila and Rossi, played expansive attacking, pacy football that brought results. Often one outweighs the other, but in Pellegrini's little tactics books lie the secrets to marrying the two together and making beautiful music.

Perhaps his Malaga side's two games with FC Porto show him at his best. In the away game, a cagey defensive formation limited a powerful Porto side to 1-0. In the return, with the same players unshackled and reshaped, thrilling victory was achieved. 

In an interesting piece written in 2009, Tim Vickery likens him to a football Roger Moore, a suave urbane man, to whose head Villareal fans would be only too happy to affix the all-important halo.

Without doubt, Mancini's successor faces a big challenge to be ready for the new season, to clear out the deadwood, to reintroduce order and to have his chosen staff in place on and off the pitch in time for August. In light of the reasons given for Mancini's exit, some of the latter will be taken from the new coach's hands anyway. If that man does turn out to be Pellegrini, it will only serve to give this tactical master even more time to shape City's football style for the immediate future. Present wounds will heal fast when we see the whites of the man's eyes.

THE SHOW GOES ON

As the rains came tumbling down Tuesday on this neat little patch of green in Berkshire, it was difficult not to think the Football Gods had sent at least some of the downpour to wash away the grief of another Manchester City managerial tragi-theatre piece. Others might have seen it as a chance to swill away any signs of the Roberto Mancini regime, already disintegrating at pace, as David Platt declined an offer to come to the show and instead headed for the dry hills to find his friend. Yet others might have linked the gushing water everywhere to metaphorical tears for yet another self-made implosion in the grand old custard-pie littered history of Manchester City football club.

Whatever your leanings, it all seemed pretty apt.

-Aguero, Dzeko score to lead City
-Pellegrini favourite to replace Mancini
-Mancini sacking starts staff overhaul

Brian Kidd, his hair plastered to his head, sat wringing his hands with nobody to talk to. With Platt gone, Mancini long gone (in football terms at least), there were plenty of spare seats in the dugout, as there were in the City section at the Madejski, as supporters voted with their feet and with their empty wallets. The average Premier League manager lifespan is down to 16 months, we are told.

With The Guardian already posting pieces on "What Pellegrini Needs to Do First" on its website, the 59-year-old Chilean's clock appears to have been set running even before the wild speculation can finish. This is modern football and its impatient, all-consuming character. One thinks back to Joe Mercer, to Malcolm Allison, to Johnny Hart and to Tony Book, to an era of thick coats and strange hats, of board members with pipes permanently angled from the corners of their mouths.

City’s history has meandered gently around all of these characters to now stand on the brink of a Chilean tactical wizard, recently of Real Madrid and Malaga and Villareal, backed by the suited ranks from Abu Dhabi. What Ron Saunders and Peter Swales would have made of that is anybody’s guess.

You can read on at ESPNFC 

GRAZIE MILLE, ROBERTO

It is not exactly anything new for football clubs -- any football club, and especially our own spotlessly shiny Manchester City -- to be accused of shabby manoeuvring and low-hand skullduggery with its managers, so FA Cup final weekend's inglorious tribute to Roberto Mancini and the many thousands of hours he has put in toward the Good Cause should not really have come as much of a shock.

Exactly a year on -- to the very day, let it be said -- from the greatest moment in any City supporter's lifetime, the air is full of the sound of tutting and expletives being offloaded into the night sky left, right and centre. Roberto Mancini has left the building with the wailing and gnashing of teeth loud and clear behind him. The Italian leaves in his wake a stream of distraught supporters, shocked at the brutality of the modern game and its lust for immediate success.

- Marcotti: Mancini's halted progress at Man City
- Brewin: City make no case for Mancini's defence
- Pellegrini favourite for City job
- WhoScored: Stats support Mancini sacking
- Jolly: Man City gamble with Mancini sacking
- Gallery: Mancini at City

In the whirring vortex of such news, it is difficult to see the wood for the trees, but let us for a moment try to take the man, his accomplishments and people's reaction thereto as our starting points.

In the maelstrom of innuendo and bleating, of finger pointing and gesticulating that we now find ourselves dispatched to, it is always the rational that is first to be dispensed with. That this storm of words was permitted to hit the nation's presses before the FA Cup final is borderline criminal, especially for a club whose appearances in these festive occasions can still be counted using the old upturned tree sloth and his three dirty little flea-infested fingers. Whether the news was squeezed out or escaped all by itself, the timing was legendary in its inappropriateness.

Roberto Mancini is a dignified man, who has often appeared ill at ease with the spit and flotsam that comes as part of the English football existence. He is, of course, Italian, so let us not pretend that he has not seen a few cut-throat shenanigans down through the years. He is no wet-behind-the-ears novice, after all. From Machiavelli to the Medicis, the Italian powerhouses have always been able to handle themselves, and Mancini is hewn from tough stock.

His departure now, with the papers falling over themselves to take a peek at Manuel Pellegrini and his credentials, smacks more than a little of the same ugly dustcloud kicked up around Mark Hughes when Mancini himself was supposedly waiting in the wings to take over.


You can read the rest of this article here

THE MAN WITH THE ANGRY FACE

Well, well, Fergus, it has come to this. I don't need the 'sir' now, do I. We have known each other long enough, you and I.

Ah yes, twenty-six years we have been staring at each other through the gently drifting swirls of coffee smoke. twenty-six years we have exchanged knowing glances behind a waft of liniment or a whiff of cordite. Twenty-six years we have ground each other down to minute dusty grains. Like an

old wardrobe or a faded picture hanging in the spare room, there has never been a moment when I didn't think you would be there with your lovely mauve hooter and your rounded Glaswegian r's. You were part of the furniture, a figure to moan and groan at when the wife was less obliging. There was always something going on between us, after all, whether it was us being of little consequence or us making too much noise, you getting too big for your boots or you rubbing our noses in the silage spill of our mid-nineties attempt at being a football club. There was always a little prospect of stray gunfire, always the faint sound of war drums banging in the distance.

And let's face it, we loved it, both you and I. We loved the opportunity to bleat and counter-bleat, to mock and foam in indignation.We liked to look non-plussed by it all and head around the corner to spit feathers. We football folk are like that, though, aren't we? A bit of leg pulling here, a bit of ribaldry there, a smile and a joke, then into the bathroom to wretch and curse and crack a few mirrors, eat a hairdryer for tea.

Our relationship, I don't know whether you remember, started well enough. On a sunny day, you made a bit of a squiffy start. Ralph Milne and all that. There was Lee Martin and a couple of other ringers in those early days and the hate mob that appeared on the Old Trafford precincts telling everyone that you had to go. They got their wish in the end then, the soft sods! It all looked quite promising in a Ron

The Milne

Atkinson sort of way. But this was a long time ago, back when Mike Phelan had hair and Dave Beckham was a little West Ham urchin in some Dagenham sink estate. There were no Big Ron necklaces about your neck, no Big Ron perma tans and no Big Ron champagne flutes. You had your Adidas puffa jacket and a bottle of whisky, but it all looked precariously un-Big Ron after a while. I hoped maybe the saga would develop with time into Tommy Cockery or Paddy Crerand Ha Ha Ha, but these too seemed an imperfect match to your serious football glances and mean, pencil thin lips.

Time moved slowly in those early years. Painfully slowly. You showed little early signs of aptitude after the Awesome Aberdeen Days. There was no Wullie Miller here. No big flaming haired Alec McLeish. Not even a John Hewitt, for heaven's sakes. Just an Archie Knox for company and that's not saying much. Those early signings gave us all a little insight into what was coming though. You had Viv Anderson and his long legs and big mouth, you hauled in Steve Bruce, one of the two Ugly Sisters who would stop a container truck with one of his smiles, you had Choccy McClair and Clayton Blackmore, with his hair like an afghan hound that was just a little bit too pleased with itself. Then we all had Jim Leighton. This was for City as well as for United., I felt. A gift to the lot of us, I suspect, the first of several that you warmly and generously offered to us during your stay in Lancashire. You weren't averse to a bit of wobbly goalkeeping, Fergus, and for that we thank you! The lad Taibi would come later of course, and he was the big present, as we grafted away in the lower leagues under your

all-engulfing shadow. That thing he did with his legs against Southampton. I thought you were going to explode in your little seat down the side there. My word, what times we were all traversing together.

You gave us other titbits to keep us from drowning. Mark Bosnich was one. And Paul Ince, for which we must thank you.

I'd like to think, once you got your tartan slippers properly under the desk, our relationship took proper constructive shape. You told us what was what and we sheepishly agreed that we had had it. We were sunk. You presided over a bit of serious empire building just as we became a music hall joke. Stuart Hall's Theatre of Base Comedy, although who's listening to him these days, eh? We were, by our own reckoning, all over the shop. That 5-1 at Maine Road with the Platt Lane empty but for a few young crackers with their banner, the Three Years of Excuses one, seemed like a long long time ago when you managed to persuade Kanchelskis to make Davey Brightwell look like a mound of wet cement sacks. I had an inkling that night that all was not exactly ok. It wasn't just the 5-0 bumping your cohorts gave us; it was the whole manner of the slaughter: unkind, devestatingly clinical and of course a five to wipe out our own five. This was to become typical of our relationship. We were already a laughing stock and you, Fergus, just made it all ten times worse. Three Years of Excuses. And Twenty-Two of endless rivers of trophies. I don't mind telling you, I became utterly sick of your I'll get yae back mentality.

It wasn't as if you didn't have other targets to pick on. Liverpool fat and loathsome on their perch, The French Professor and all those languages he spoke, Real Madrid and their viruses, that tricky Inzahgi who was born offside, and even some your own inner cabal not exactly polishing pebbles for you. Grown up Dave Beckham, Stam, Van Nistelrooy, even the old vein bulger himself, they all got on your 

A proud man

wick eventually, didn't they? That chump Rooney has gone down the same road and now he's off to practise his communication skills at, where was it again, Bavaria? Paris? Makes so little difference for a cosmopolitan man like that, I suppose. You might like to offer him a word of advice as you both pack your little departing suitcases, as to where to get a decent Chablis without needing a straw or how to spot a decent Bordeaux. Looks A bit like Vimto" will probably suffice for the lad."

We went off your radar for a while, it must be said. Occasionally our paths would cross and you would chirrup something tasty about how inconsequential we were. If we weren't already feeling suicidal, your mots justes would certainly have propelled us towards the edge of the cliff. I'd wager your utterings had me in a royal froth on more than one occasion. I was livid. But then so were you half the time. We were down on our luck. Third division, Auto Windshields, Mansfield Town et al. Your chums at The Mirror did a job on us that night too! You had them all licking drips off the ends of your stubby Glaswegian fingers, you rascal.

We met in the Cup and, by some quirk of fate, the little bald Geordie ref saw your lot through with a penalty from heaven. Your man Cantona, a strutting collar-up pillar of hormonal self-love, was your on-pitch spokesman. Not the ugly aunties Pallister and Bruce, not the girly voiced Beckham, not even the rabid dog Keane, but this cocksure Marseillais stallion with a smirk on his face. I still see his reaction to that goal against Sunderland at night sometimes when the wind is banging against the window panes. He embodied all those finite, beautiful yet cruel acts you deemed paramount, all those thrusts of the knife into our bleeding hearts.

Of late, our relationship has changed for the worse, of course. We became a threat. You got rattled. Carlos did the dirty. The sign went up in town. The tables turned. Your expression turned to granite. We know even today that there are times when we should just steer clear of you. That face, set in Son, you were sitting at the Captain's Table. Now you're rowing down with the other bastards...". It was always us and them, you and me. Poor John Motson. You gave the BBC twenty years of Mike Phelan and his mustache. Not caring much for etiquette, unless it was being fired in your direction, you slapped bans here and made snidey under the microphone asides there. Anyone and everyone was a target in your thunderstruck democracy.

An affectionate hug

stone, gripped by some perceived injustice, tells us quite clearly to step aside. Some have fond out the hard way, with a flying boot or a torrent of expletives. Some have been banned from talking, from writing, from entering the red promenade. You were a poet too in those moments of cruelty. As one of your ex-men of the press Mr Palmer heard, "

But maybe we have to apologise for the last three years. We have risen quickly and above our station, giving you migraine and gut ache. Quite unnecessary for a man of your age, who had fought to knock those Scousers from their "fucking perch". Now a new foe, so close to home, with the volume turned up so loud. You did your best to belittle us as before. There was the 6-1 stuffing on your own patch. Johnny Evans looked like a bollard and you used the words "suicidal" and "embarrassing" in public, as if you almost accepted the sea change.

Not in my lifetime, you mumbled, but having diarrhea on the hard shoulder is easier than seeing City off these days. We stuck at it, even as you gloried in our demise. People chuckled about Devon Loch and you tried not to enjoy the horse racing analogies too much. It was tough going keeping your face straight, then Moyes's Everton blew everything up in your face. Suddenly there was a thrashing and

threshing noise behind you, culminating in one very ugly afternoon on Wearside that must have felt like the end of the world. To us, at that late point, in that manner, with the locals dancing up and down like that. No respect. It was irony moulded into a lethal dart.

And then that stopwatch of yours started telling you something new. The ticking got louder. Times sands shift and wait for no man.

So you swallowed your pride and you came back for more. One last time, as it now appears. You may have been a bully to us all these years but you have been a fighter, still now in your sunset years; you don't give up and that has brought you your final reward: to go out at the top. Not cowed, not beaten by us interminably chirpy pessimists, but as a league champion once more. You ruled with an iron fist, you celebrated with a granny jig. But you can relax it all now. The fist. Unclench it. You leave us as a winner one last time.

And, do you know what, we'll not begrudge you that, with your angry old face.

GRIN AND TONIC

Edin Dzeko leads the reaction to his clean connection on the volley

Beauty, it is said, is in the eye of the beholder, and there was something for every artistic bent at the Etihad Tuesday. 
Like a ripe apple, this was a match that could be divided into three distinct parts: 20 minutes of slumber, followed by 25 of electric attacking, followed by 45 of stumbling around. Much has been said of City's advantage over United in terms of squad depth and Tuesday that was at least half proved by the sight of a practically all-new 11 out on the pristine Etihad turf, compared to the Sleepwalk in the Valleys last weekend. 


There was an entirely new back four, featuring the welcome sight of the arm-banded Micah Richards and the less promising sight of Aleksander Kolarov strolling around at left back. As expected, the reserve central pairing of Kolo Toure and Joleon Lescott also got the nod, a clear confirmation that young Matija Nastasic will take his deserved place in the Cup final, after a debut season in the Premier League which has been rich in promise and high in quality.


- Match report: Manchester City 1-0 West Brom
- Video: Mancini looking ahead to Wembley


Of those patrolling further forward, only Carlos Tevez seems sure to play at the weekend, with Roberto Mancini having a tricky choice to make between the skills of Nasri and the drive of James Milner. Many would choose the latter; a certain well-known Italian might just do the opposite. It's a matter of taste, evidently.
 
Amid all the speculation surrounding the dreamy figure of Edin Dzeko, whether he was psychologically fit to play, whether he deserved to roll on the sky blue shirt after the distressingly vapid performance at the weekend, there he was, doing what Dzeko does best: First he dangled a great limb at a 33rd-minute cross from the left. The ball shot through him as if he were made of butterfly netting. It seems at times only Dzeko can marry the appearance of a proud forest stag with the durability of rice paper. But at least he kept at it. 


You can read the rest of this article on ESPN's MCFC pages here 

WEMBLEY WARDROBE MALFUNCTION ZAPS DZEKO

With one side basking in that Wembley afterglow of success that sometimes strikes League Cup winners down with a rare sort of paralysis more often accredited to striped Australian bugs, and the other in a typically pre-Wembley Cup final tip-toe of self-preservation, Swansea and Manchester City served up a game that seemed to last even longer than the 102 minute marathon in October between the two sides.

That was one of the Premier League's longest ever games. This one seemed to be trying to drag itself grimly on well beyond that remarkable barrier, despite referee Mike Jones's mercy killing occurring as early as the 93rd minute.

- Swansea City view from Max Hicks: Renewed spirit 
- ESPN Match report Swans and City share stalemate

City, on an eight game run of success that has seen them hoisted as the Premier League's late season form team, versus Swansea, a team searching for any semblance of form at all. Michael Laudrup and

For Laudrup, his season's job has been done since the moment Swansea's first ever trophy was secured along with a comfortable berth in Premier League mid-table. After Swansea's inaugural season with the big boys under Brendan Rodgers, this term has been so far from the usual goblin attacks of second season syndrome as to be almost totally unrecognisable from the expected norm.

As for Mancini, his season's work hangs on the small matter of next weekend's game with Wigan Athletic at Wembley. It seems ever so slightly odd that a team that has participated in the Champions League and run with (or slightly behind) Manchester United all season for the league title, should now be staring at a single make-or-break game, but that is the reality of the situation Mancini and his men find themselves in.

Win it and City go into the close season full of hope, with a fourth trophy secured in three years, ready and willing to spend on new recruits of high calibre and working towards a renewed assault on the top of the table. Lose it and those dreaded storm clouds of old will begin to gather, the sound of sharpening knives will be heard and certain sections of the press will have their gleeful field day.

Mancini's reaction to the news that City had been chatting to Malaga coach Manuel Pellegrini during the week was generally translated by the word "non-plussed" in the mainstream press. What he feels

inside is another matter. To be portrayed as a failure, or anything approaching it, is to ignore the sound job done so far and instead be dazzled by those who will have it that the Italian is a one-man vanity project, who cannot or will not countenance proper man-management and who has no time for players who do not show the same levels of technique and know-how that he did in his gilded youth.

Roberto Mancini, both alumni of Lazio and true scholars of the more artistic machinations of this simple game we call football, have their work cut out.

Laudrup, you feel, might have been forgiven for having feelings along similar lines, as he watched his charges flail and flap and fail to get past a lethargic, dreamy-looking City. Those televised tears shed so publicly here last season could have been tears of frustration Saturday, as a full strength City did nothing to suggest they will finish the league campaign devouring opponents. Instead, as Cup Final foes Wigan embarked on yet another sprightly end of term relegation sprint, City were to be found plodding around the Valleys leaden footed and disinterested.

These traits were perhaps best illustrated by the towering figure of Edin Dzeko, who appeared for the second half instead of Yaya Toure. Dzeko's moment came near the end, with just seven minutes remaining, as he succeeded in steering an easy chance wide with the aplomb of a man with his mind on the dotted line at the bottom of a contract entitled "The Undersigned Will Hereby Play for Borussia Dortmund". The Bosnian has the air of a man asked to hold onto a wardrobe for five minutes in case a light breeze blows it away, who still manages to be empty handed when you return. Four goals in 2013 for City, Dzeko's startling malaise is just a microcosm of City's big failing this season: 26 fewer than at this stage last season. For the team, this can be rectified. For Dzeko, you sense the exit door is falling off its hinges waiting for him to pass through it, both as far as he is concerned, as the club itself.

There were some positives to gain from all of this: Joe Hart accumulated yet another clean sheet towards what will surely be his third consecutive Golden Glove award, while also surpassing Micah Richards as City's third-most fielded player in the premier league era (161); no injuries were reported (although Scott Sinclair did end up in a Manchester hospital after a blood clot in his shoulder was reported. The player had not travelled with the squad); plus referee Jones saw fit not to award a penalty to Swansea (why break the habit of a season...?) when the classy Matija Nastasic wiped out Michu in the area. Dzeko later tried the same trick at the other end, but his clumsy fall looked more like an old lady running down a flight of steps. It has been that kind of an end to the season for the Bosnian. For it not to be that kind of a season for City, they must re-find the panache and drive in time for Wigan next Saturday.

NEVER SHORT OF AN OPINION: Mancini shares a tactical thought with his lazio boss Sven Goran Eriksson

This article first appeared on ESPN's website