He's always whining, whether it's about transfers or being a prick on the touchline asking for yellow cards. He's a beaut, wish Gerrard had battered him in the tunnel that time.
He has something to whine about. This is going to make his life a lot more difficult than he would like, and he might wind up getting fired over it. The current manchester city team is a bubble, created by the continual injection of huge amounts of cash. They've dragged themselves up the table by hurling a succession of very expensive players at the team. A lot of them haven't worked out, but this has been more than compensated for by adding a genius like David silva, or sergio aguero. City won the league by the continual addition of more and more firepower. But their spending further back in the team has been less successful.
Now they've stopped further inflating the bubble, and now we're going to see if the bubble has any leaks. He can't solve deficiencies in defence (where Kompany is their only truly world class performer) by just throwing another couple of fullbacks at the problem, and hoping that they will sort it out. Instead he's going to have to do something about improving the players at his disposal. i'm not sure he's all that good at that.
Someone like Jose mourinho is also unafraid to spend a hell of a lot of money when the opportunity arises, but he buys players to weld into a powerful team unit. He adds something to the party other than signing good players, he makes them play better together, and thus gets even more out of them. This is what mancini can't do. It's why Rafa was so easily able to brush him aside in 2008 even when we weren't in the best of form in the league. Rafa had a very good understanding of how the team should fit together, particularly in defence. Inter Milan just didn't have that, and were efficiently picked off by a better organized, vastly less expensive team. Even when mancini when man city keeping a lot of clean sheets in 2010-11, it was because tevez was frequently the only player in the opposition half. Anyone can do that, the challenge is marrying good defending to attacking enough to win a league, or winning in europe.
Even then they don't look great in a couple of other areas. They look particularly thin in central midfield where Gareth Barry is 31 and as slow as a house. Nigel De Jong is permanently out of favour, and his contract expires at the end of the season, with no sign of them offering him a new one. Yaya Toure is a fantastic player in a lot of respects, but if you believe that he's 29, I have a bridge I want to sell you.
When Mancini was in a similar position an inter milan, he was able to win consecutive serie A titles by assembling a massively expensive squad, with an overwhelming force of attacking players. But every time they went into europe, they would get knocked out at the first knockout hurdle. After losing to us, with a team that was being paid twice as much as ours, and cost nearly three times as much, Mancini threw an enormous tantrum and quit his job in march, before skulking back to see out the end of the season. Last season he had massive blow outs with Tevez, ballotelli and Dzeko. He's a man who loves a good fight, and I can see it happening again this season. It's just the way he is.
Things would be a lot easier for him if they could have sold tevez, dzeko, adebayor, kolorov and kolo toure. However no-one can afford to pay what man city are asking, and have no interest in paying the insane wages these players are on. It's going to be very interesting to see how things unfold this season. It's a very volatile club, with an explosively volatile manager, and some very volatile players. I'd be slow to automatically expect success given how unstable the whole thing is.
