Eight hundred million pounds invested, a one hundred and seventy four million pound wage bill, losses of one hundred and ninety four million, boasts that they can ‘do it on the first attempt’, and now Man City fans the abyss is staring you all smack in the face; not quite, but ALMOST out of Europe’s elite competition at the first hurdle on the first attempt. Not to gloat, but like I said in my article touching six months ago; I told you that you wouldn’t be able to match Spurs.
I never keep it quiet that I’m not a fan of Man City. Hell, the last time I wrote an article about them my emails were blowing up with furious comments. But colours and preferences aside, why have City just been unable to translate the blistering form they’re showing in the Premier League into Europe? Are the dizzy heights of the English league’s summit causing a nauseous headache that deems them incapable of maintaining that form when the really big spotlight is on? When I sat down to watch the build up, I immediately knew City would be in for a hard time when I saw the team selections for both sides; Napoli opting for an all out attacking, positive 3-4-3 formation – signalling their intent to go out onto the Stadio Sao Paolo pitch and press Man City from the off, this was a game they couldn’t afford to lose.
City on the other hand deciding to go with a flat 4-4-2 formation, as opposed to the 4-3-3 that has left defences all across England dumbfounded and at their wits end wondering how to defend against all season. City were going to try and beat their Vesuvian foes in the numbers game, press and press. Something that definitely didn’t happen as Man City were AGAIN guilty of being asleep for the first fifteen minutes of the game, constantly defending on edge and realising they were supposed to be winning this game when they finally went behind after suicidal defending again.
Team rotation is one of the factors that has shot Roberto Mancini in the foot this time around too. With City buying up scores of talent, constantly adding more talent to an already talented side, there comes the issue that every player has to play his fair share of games. James Milner, the kind of player who wouldn’t attempt a piece of flair play even on the training pitch, plonked into the midfield and left to stagnate and look horribly average compared to David Silva, who despite his best efforts, couldn’t muster that one piece of magic to play Mario Balotelli through (I’ve left Edin Dzeko out of that equation, I forgot he was even on the pitch until his number went up to be substituted).
Furthermore, the omission of Micah Richards – arguably the best right back in the country right now – for Pablo Zabaleta was just plain ludicrous.
I know Mancini has a policy of rotating his full backs on a regular basis, but he must have seen the bigger picture here; City NEEDED a win, this game hinged on whether Sheikh Mansour’s playthings would do the business first time around, get the win against Napoli and you can play kids against Bayern Munich, if he really wanted to he could take the entire first team to Aruba for Mai Tais and Singapore Slings by the beach. But no policy is policy, everyone needs to have a go, and Mancini chose to field a sufficiently poorer side than the one that ripped the red half of Manchester a new hole only a couple of weeks prior.
Related to the team rotation issue is the issue of why Daddy Cool Mancini didn’t decide to change things when Napoli’s second goal went in. Sure enough, come the end of the first half City were on top, pushing for a second goal. But as soon as the whistle blew for the second half, and the Naples crowd, fifty nine thousand strong and armed with a hell of a lot of fireworks, got behind their team louder than they had previously (and trust me it WAS loud) there seemed to be no way back for City.
Napoli went searching for their goal and got it, and in truth should have had a lot more had it not been for a terrific display between the sticks from Joe Hart. If he had any sense, then Mancini would have given the team five minutes after that goal went in, maybe ten at a push, and brought Sergio Aguero on for Milner, and changed to the formation that produces results for City. Don’t get me wrong, the Blues threatened; but only in flashes.
Calamitous defending gifted their goal to them and everything just seemed off with the way that they played; the changes that were made came at the wrong time – Sergio Aguero provided more of a legitimate threat in the five minutes (that’s right five minutes) he was given than anybody else had throughout the entire game, players of his calibre need more than a five minute cameo at the end of a game where the side NEEDS to score a goal. Bad Daddy Cool based on tonight’s performance.
A sub story of the fixture was that it was the triumphant return to the pinnacle of the club game for both sides. Napoli, rescued from bankruptcy, five years ago plying their trade in the Italian third Division, back on the big stage as they were in the late eighties. Manchester City, playing in the third tier of English football thirteen years ago, now the richest club on the planet, participating in their first European Cup competition since way back in 1968. Surely the focus of both the teams here would have been to win, and win convincingly; chase every ball, close down, do everything your under tens football coach barked at you to do, but it seemed to be only Napoli adopting this attitude for the greater majority of the game.