No we underperformed the season before he came. We finished 6th which looks unlikely this season, so if he really believes that which I doubt essentially he's saying he spent the best part of £500m to regress the team.
Excuses nothing more.
For me, this is where both the media and our fans annoy me when assessing him.
When you put our squad of players in the middle of last season and described the starting individuals, a lot of fans would have expected them to compete higher in the table.
We literally have Varane, Licha, Shaw, Onana, Casemiro, Bruno and Rashford. These players were all considered world class in some shape or form over the last 2 seasons.
When you then add the hype around youth and the expectations of the rest of the group: Dalot, Malacia, AWB, Eriksen, Mount, Mainoo, Garnacho, Hojlund, Amad, Maguire and Lindelof.
This team should not be that bad.At the moment, no team outside of City has 11 pheonomenal players. We literally see Arsenal playing Nketiah, Tomiyasu and Ben White consistently. Liverpool play Curtis Jones, Harvey Elliot and Endo. They also have problems with their attackers, yet we all still have expectations regarding them challenging. This imperfect team can come to United and beat us 7-0. This team can have people celebrating and extending a manager's stay due to a draw.
I'm not even bringing up Spurs or Aston Villa's squads, which would have been considered poorer than us by everybody prior to the season.
Also add this to the fact that we finished last in a group containing Galatasaray and Copenhagen, both of whom are significantly worse than us on paper.
Not only does he not have the right to make these comments. I think it's a disgrace that he's even in position to be making them. For me, him being in place is a sign of the weakness that has plagued us for the last ten years. I don't think he's a good tactician. I don't think he's a good in-game manager. I don't think he's a good squad manager. I don't think he instill's confidence. I don't think he's been improving players. I just see a man clinging on to a job that he doesn't deserve to still have. But due to his Ajax links and our current mind-set of self pitying pessimism, our fans also don't seem, people are ok with wasting yet another season. Sack him in November, and we may very well have been in the title race given the lack of consistency from there. A more optimistic, ambitious team would have done this and used the January window one or two positions that need an immediate boost, which would have increased the strength of our squad for a challenge. I remember in the winter of 2013, still believing that Moyes could turn it around and have us in the title race due to how much trust I had in Fergie to that prior. In the winter of 2012, we didn't have Casemiro, Bruno, Varane, Rashford. We were playing Carrick and Jones in midfield. Evans and an aging Rio in defence. Welbeck/Chicarito up front. Yet with Fergie, if in the position we were in in November, everyone would have believed that we could still challenge for the league and be in the champions league. They could trust that Fergie could put those players in position to succeed despite certain limitations or injuries.
Those are what standards look like. Things that our club and fanbase seem to have forgotten about due to the endless concept of a rebuild. This isn't basketball, rebuilds don't exist in football. Teams evolve by spending money, implementing tactics and optimizing players in existing squads, particularly if they were bought for significant figures. Those evolutions are season to season and don't require 5 years to see changes and playing style improvements . Despite being the closest thing to a rebuild in premier league history, City under Mancini would not have kept him if he hadn't consistently improved results and playing style. He would have been sacked if he spent money on Antony instead of getting Aguero and Silva. Regardless of whether he was to blame for the price or not. That's accountability, something we haven't held managers to for the last ten years, yet expect anything more than a rollercoaster.
