It seems Mark Hughes was right after all. Roberto Mancini’s autocratic style has claimed another victim, namely Adam Johnson. “Reports” emerged that he initially refused to get on the team coach after City’s win over Wolves in the Carling Cup, due to criticism of him in Mancini’s post-match interview.
Or maybe not. Many would have you believe that Johnson is being wasted at City, and that Mancini’s criticisms of him are unfair. On both counts, they are wrong. As was Hughes, on many levels.
It’s hard to claim that Johnson is wasted at City when he has improved as a player under Mancini’s tutelage. He was playing in the Championship at Middlesbrough, and was hardly the first name on the team sheet there, sometimes kept out of the side by Stewart Downing. His England appearances have tended to come since his move to City. As Mancini said this week, he criticises him because he knows he can do better, and because he knows what he is capable of, and this is his way of trying to push him further. I’m not totally sure it’s right to talk about players’ deficiencies in public, because as we saw with his coach protest, players are generally precious souls, but in Mancini we trust, as after all he knows the player and the situation far better than I or anyone else does.
“I am happy he is upset,” said Mancini this week. “I love Adam. It is like with the children in your family. If you love your children, then sometimes you should be hard with them and Adam understands this. I say what I want because, if he were not a good player, then I wouldn’t waste my time on him. But because he has everything, I don’t want him stopping at this level. I want him up a level and then a level more.”
The player who some claim is gathering splinters on the substitutes bench has appeared for City 54 times since he signed right at the end of January 2010. He made 43 appearances for City last season, and has featured 8 times this season so far. He is not the forgotten man that some would have you believe.
And if you want reasons for why he sometimes only appears from the bench, then the answer is there for all to see in the games he has started. Quite simply, he has not performed at the required level when in the starting eleven, with a tendency to disappear from games and have limited impact on proceedings.
From the bench, it is a different story, there being few players better at coming off the bench and putting the opposition to the sword. It seems he prospers against tiring legs, but if he wants to feature more he has to do it for 90 minutes, not 20. But it is something else that irks Mancini more.
With Johnson, the criticism from above has been that he is shirking his defensive duties, duties that are vital when you are a wide player that needs to support his full-back.