Quote:
Originally Posted by noodlehair
Is it just me who thinks Mancini's been a bit of a bellend?
I'm not going to defend Tevez or that weird bond villain agent of his, but Mancini did kind of manufacture this situation for himself.
He knew Tevez wanted out, and he knew the club wanted to recoup as much money as they could for him...and yet he puts Tevez on the bench for a CL game and then tries to bring him on and void any interest in him from the Milan clubs. Someone had obviously had a word in Tevez's ear and told him not to play (either that or he's less thick than he looks/usually acts)...and then afterwards Mancini comes out and tells the world what had just happened, presumably in some plight of self sorrow or excuse finding. He acted like an oaf...and yes, there are valid question marks over his handling of various other players, and general, pre-Wengeresque meltdown behaviour of recent weeks.
I don't think he's as "classy" as everyone seems to keep telling me he is, at the very least. He's feeling the pressure and doing a gradually worsening job of hiding it.
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That's some almighty conspiracy theory!
As far as Tevez goes, City should have known what they were getting into. Running back to his youth career, he seems to have left every club he's been at on bad terms, with West Ham being the only exception.
Mancini was expecting him to know his role in the squad - not a guaranteed starter - and, with City not beating Munich, tried to bring him on, to reshuffle things in attack. Tevez's refusal to come on was unprecedented, even for him. If Mancini had orchestrated this, Tevez wouldn't have been bleating on about "language barriers"; he'd have gone right for the throat. Mancini can be accused of poor man-management here, of failing to foresee Tevez's poor attitude in a familiar situation (see: his attitude when Berbatov joined United and he had to fight for his place), but it's beyond belief that he set Tevez up like this, especially when failure to progress past the group stages would have more ominous implications for Mancini than anyone else.