Think Jamie Carragher's been reading this forum..

[blueboy]

Sheik Mansour was determined to do things differently to Roman Abramovich when he bought Manchester City. Now Chelsea have become everything City wanted to be.
City were supposed to dominate English and European football with a ‘holistic’ approach, bringing through young talent and not just spending the huge amounts Abramovich did when he arrived at Chelsea.
Instead, despite their obvious successes, they have an ageing squad, problems with Financial Fair Play and are making the same mistakes in the Champions League as when they first played in it.

Chelsea, by contrast, have some of Europe’s brightest players, buy and sell intelligently and are thriving on the pitch, too.
Sheik Mansour’s recruitment of Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain from Barcelona was seen as crucial in helping transform City’s philosophy and standing in the game.
Yet have the changes gone to plan? I would strongly argue no. To have such riches but have one of the Premier League’s oldest squads and be so heavily reliant on one player - Yaya Toure - shows there has been mismanagement and poor decisions with the quality and age of signings

Am I being too harsh? Four trophies since 2011 may say yes but for the £500million spent since 2008, who is the young star that is going to carry them forward? Who is City’s Eden Hazard or Thibaut Courtois?
Why are they so top-heavy with players in their late twenties? Watching Barcelona run rings around City for the second year in a row I struggled to understand why their squad needed such major surgery.
Not only that, is there another team in the Premier League so reliant on its main players? Every time Manuel Pellegrini makes changes for cup games, like against Middlesbrough, Wigan and Newcastle in the last 12 months, results have been appalling.
I thought Begiristain and Soriano would entice the best young talent across Europe and reinvigorate the squad.

City have been making big noises about the facilities for their new academy but so what? It all comes down to the coaching and youngsters being given a chance.
When City’s academy was based at Platt Lane, plenty of youngsters broke through but that stopped once the big money came in. Why were they so reluctant to give a young striker a chance, for example, when James Milner was forced to play out of position during Aguero’s absence?
City will have to spend big again this summer - I think they need five top players, which could cost beyond £150m - but how will they do that when UEFA have punished them already for breaking FFP rules?
They got into a position last summer, remember, where they could not replace Alvaro Negredo and when you look at the current squad, you wonder who Pellegrini could sell to generate transfer revenue.

This is similar to how Chelsea were until recently under Abramovich. They bought overpriced players in huge quantities, they sacked managers on a regular basis and had no youth players coming through. The difference is that they were competing in the Champions League all that time. Yes, they’ve won the competition only once but they reached several semi-finals and a final in 2008 and always looked like they had a chance of winning.
Tomorrow is their 11th major final since Abramovich became owner in 2003.
Chelsea should now be recognised as the best club at player-trading in the business, selling players such as David Luiz, Kevin de Bruyne, Romelu Lukaku and Andre Schurrle for big profits and using the income to buy the players they want, such as Diego Costa and Cesc Fabregas.

You can also see, though, how Chelsea have looked to protect their future, with smart buys such as Courtois and Kurt Zouma. They are in the first team and look like they will be there for a long time. Chelsea have made the breakthrough to become a genuine powerhouse.
It is no longer about just spending money. There is a clear plan and they have shown they will be able to compete and thrive in the era of FFP, as proved by their new £200m sponsorship deal with Yokohama Rubber.
Can the same be said of City? At the moment it all feels wrong. It feels like they need to start again.
Credit should be given for how they have stayed in the title race, particularly as they had to do without Sergio Aguero for so long, and keeping the gap to five points has been an admirable effort - they are the only team who can stop Chelsea.

In Europe, however, they have been woeful and the meeting with Barcelona illustrated how far they have to go.
To continually adopt the same naive tactics, deploying a 4-4-2 system two years running against the same opponents and expect a different outcome beggared belief.
It will not be lost on City’s hierarchy that their season could be over by the middle of March.

[Topdawg]

He's right. We can't really compete and are doing well to even hang on. With this new sponsorship, and the extra money from the tv deals (BT CL £30M and the new PL deal £50M), they'll be getting £100M more a season than they are getting now. They'll have massive spending power again without having to worry about FFP. Every club will be getting shedloads more and we have to get our buying strategy spot on just to compete.

[blueboy]

I'd like to hear from Khaldoon and what he thinks is going on. It was he who brought in the 2 Directors and first spoke of this 'holistic' approach 3 years ago.

[leopold]

Half of that is the same trite bullshit that everyone else churns out. Chelsea had a five year head start and some half decent players. We started with a good stadium and a dodgy owner. Chelsea didn't have to deal with FFP. Chelsea didn't have a manager who insisted on buying a dickhead centre forward and then hang on to him for so long we ended up making a loss.

Yes, we're not doing as well, but we had a lot further to go and we're having to do it on a smaller horse.

It also doesn't help that we get attached to valuable players, but that could well be down to the fact the backup is so poor.

I'd agree we need to do more with what we have, though.

[Topdawg]

I maintain that we should have been buying one awesome player every season for the past, say, 3 seasons. Ever since we got Aguero, we haven't bought a big player.

I was glad we didn't get Hazard at the time, but that has proven to be a mistake. Hazard or Navas? 

We could be sat here waiting for the game tomorrow with Hazard, Fabregas and a couple of decent defenders in our squad.

[blueboy]

I'm more concerned about the Managers tactics than the squad.

I mean, Tuesday, we all knew was going to be a tough game, but by picking that formation that hasn't worked in Europe, or in the PL against the bigger teams, was suicidal.

Let's hope tomorrow he realises that Dzeko is still shit and playing him with Aguero just doesn't work.

In all likelihood, we'll see Jovetic play up front with Aguero tomorrow and the lumbering Fernando back. 

[Topdawg]

You can play 442 if the two up top are world class and prepared to run around like crazy.

[ManCityMan]

Lovely interaction between Aguero and Dzeko and a smart finish by Dzeko for our goal on Sunday, Dzeko played prett well I thought. :-)

[blueboy]

Bugger off being controversial MCM.
Dzeko's goal was a great move, but from 6yrds out, I'd expect any half decent striker to score it.

What he did prior and after the goal amounted the to the sum of fuck all.

[ManCityMan]

Sorry mate you know I love to wind you up lol however, I honestly didn't think he was that terrible. The problem was with the formation and too many others not giving a fuck. VK is woeful, how many times have we seen him try to be clever and lose possession in dangerous areas? MP is a clown and this will be his last season hopefully, whether he will be here to the last game of it is the question.

[blueboy]

Agree.

[TMG]

If we are gonna play 424 and the Leicester game is one where it should work, lets give Bony & Aguero 70 mins together  & bring on Dzeko for the last 20 instead of the other way round

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