City need to give Mancini the boot
Last week, Mancini criticised Mario Balotelli for his performance against Sunderland, deploring the lack of professionalism he showed in arguing with his team-mates and stating that City certainly would have won had Sergio Aguero, rather than Balotelli, been available to play.
Yet when he picked his team to face Arsenal at the Emirates, he again chose Balotelli ahead of Edin Dzeko and Carlos Tevez. He was rewarded with one of Balotelli’s worst performances since Mancini signed him for £25 million two summers ago.
By my reckoning, Balotelli should already have been sent off twice before Martin Atkinson eventually produced the red card, as City trailed 1-0 going into injury time.
There had been a vicious over-the-ball lunge on Alex Song, two more studs-up challenges on Bacary Sagna, one of which cost him a booking, a deliberate handball for which he was penalised yet somehow not booked, further arguments with team-mates, and ultimately the idiotic tackle on Sagna that brought the long-overdue second yellow card.
In the absence of a title race, Balotelli was all the journalists wanted to talk about. “He was on the fringe... he flirted with orange,” Arsene Wenger said.
Mancini was more forthright. “I think that Mario deserved to be sent off after 10 minutes,” he said. Mancini had already told TV interviewers he hoped the FA would charge Balotelli for the foul on Song.
Once again Mancini was engaging in the curious habit of speaking as though he was an opposing manager or a TV pundit who had no influence on Balotelli.
At first denouncing Balotelli, then declaring his love for him, it was difficult to tell exactly where Mancini stood on the question of his future. No wonder his team seems directionless and confused.
“I am finished my work for him. I love him like a guy, like a player, he’s not a bad guy, he’s a fantastic player. But in this moment I am very sorry for him, he continues to lose his talent, his quality, I hope he can understand he is in a bad way for his future, and he can change his behaviour in the future. Now I’m finished, we have six games, he will not play.”
Does that mean you’ll sell him? “Probably sell him. I don’t know, I can continue to play him... but every time we play him we risk having one sent off.”
These would be wise words coming from anyone but the manager of Manchester City. Coming from Mancini himself, they are totally inexplicable. If this is what he believes, why does he keep picking Balotelli?
More to the point, since everyone in the stadium could see that Balotelli was lucky not to have been sent off twice in the first half, which ended with him sprawled on the turf, the victim of Bacary Sagna’s vigilante justice, why did Mancini not do the obvious thing and substitute him at half time?
Mancini insisted he had not seen the tackle on Song in real time, even though it happened no more than 10 metres from him, right in front of the City dugout.
Since Balotelli’s offence was clearly visible from the radio commentary positions, tucked in underneath the roof of the first tier and a good 40 metres further back from the action than Mancini was, it’s hard to see how the City boss could have missed it.
It is impossible to believe he also missed the two similar instances in which Balotelli led with his studs against Sagna, or the deliberate handball with which he risked a second yellow card just before half time.
It was Mancini’s responsibility at that point to take Balotelli off to protect the team, but he did nothing. When he finally decided to send on Tevez with six minutes left, it was not Balotelli, but Aguero, that made way.
Mancini thus had to snub Tevez and Dzeko to keep Balotelli involved in the match up until the point where he finally got the red card that everyone in the stadium except his manager had seen coming.
As Balotelli stalked away Joe Hart could be seen at the other end of the pitch, raging at the stupidity of his team-mate, and he will not have been the only City player feeling that way.
This was a tour de force of mismanagement. Mancini’s decisions suggested he had become fixated on proving himself right about Balotelli, to the neglect of doing what was best for Manchester City.
It doesn’t matter that afterwards he seemed to wash his hands of the player. Balotelli went down in flames, and so should the manager who staked his hopes on him.
Mancini says Balotelli won’t be involved again this season, but he made the same promise about Tevez and reneged on it. Managing a team of mercenaries with superinflated egos is not easy, but Mancini has made it more complicated still with contradictory statements and baffling decisions.
He offered the big-picture perspective that City have 15 more points than they had at the same stage last season.
The real big picture is that it’s Easter Monday and City have already blown it. Some players look exhausted, others look disaffected, and after three solid years of outspending everyone else in the league, they will lose the title to a team they beat 6-1 earlier in the season.
With the weight of nearly unlimited finance behind them in a sport which is increasingly determined by payroll, it seems inevitable that City will win the league sooner or later. But who now believes in their ability to close the deal with Mancini at the helm? Who is to say next season too will not fall apart amid confusion and infighting?
He spoke yesterday of City being perhaps “two, three players” short of winning the league. The best way City could spend £20 million this summer would not be to sign two or three more players, but to recruit a proven winner as coach.
Whether or not Jose Mourinho turns out to be a winner this season with Real Madrid, City should aim to persuade him he can be a winner with them this time next year.
