By Andrew Warshaw
May 14 – Even before the Premier League season has ended, the sack race has begun – with Manchester City’s Roberto Mancini the most high-profile victim.
Winning City’s first league title for 44 years, a year ago to the day before he was shown the door by his Abu Dhabi bosses, ultimately counted for nothing as Mancini’s reign came to an end, ironically 24 hours after the red half of the city celebrated their 13th title under the retiring Alex Ferguson with en emotional open-top bus tour.
City’s fans struck up a special relationship with Mancini but although he brought in a crop of expensive players, he found it tough to control conflicting egos and in the end couldn’t buy the most precious commodity of all – loyalty.
Yet City should have fared far better. Second season syndrome is notorious in football but finishing the current campaign without silverware of any kind proved to be the nail in Mancini’s City coffin. He became the 15th City manager to lose his job while Ferguson was still in charge at United. A sobering statistic if there ever was one.
In one sense, Mancini virtually wrote his own death sentence after Saturday’s FA Cup Final upset by Wigan. Speculation about his future had been growing and instead of brushing it aside, Mancini – who often came across as a proud, tortured and misunderstood soul – was critical of the club’s failure to back him.
The reason soon became clear. In a statement City said that Mancini “failed to achieve any of the club’s targets, with the exception of qualification for next season’s Champions League.”
Malaga’s Chilean coach Manuel Pellegrini is favourite to succeed Mancini and although his exit appears harsh, there will be those who argue City’s owners had little choice. Coming second to United is one thing; coming a distant second is another.
Exiting the Champions League in the group stages was hardly part of the script either. Although City were in a tough group that included Borussia Dortmund, who will contest next week’s final, as well as beaten semifinalists Real Madrid, his side failed to reach the knockout stage in both campaigns during his three and a half years. City’s tally of just three points, they didn’t win a single game, was the lowest ever by an English side in the group stage.
Mancini’s man-management style was clearly also a factor and was a far cry from the “holistic approach” City’s owners said they had expected from him. Whilst it could be argued they were ones who appointed him in the first place, reports that followed his sacking highlighted his flawed relationship with his players and festering unrest.
“Basically, Mancini just ignored players from day one,” former City defender Danny Mills told the BBC. “He was the manager, he made decisions, he made no attempt to have any sort of relationship with the players, didn’t take them under his wing. It was very much, ‘I’m the manager, I’ll do my thing, I’ll pick the team and then I’ll disappear’.
“You speak to the players and you know there’s a lot of discontent in that dressing room. They’ll say it wasn’t a particularly happy camp at times, there were a lot of different factions in that dressing room.”
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