Pellegrini Interview

There is a thin line between holding your head up high and having it buried in the sand. For now, Manuel Pellegrini is on the right side of the divide – proud but not deluded.
He knows the drill, he was at Real Madrid where you finish the season without a trophy and you get the sack.
But he believes Manchester City is different. He guided them to a league title he says they got nowhere near enough credit for last season and he wants to keep taking them forward.

He knows they should be in the last eight of the Champions League but that’s tough when you keep on drawing Barcelona in the last 16.
‘Roberto [Mancini] left the club for other reasons, not because he didn’t win anything one year. It’s not “if you don’t win, you’re out”,’ he says of the strategy behind the removal of his predecessor.
‘Of course winning trophies here is extremely important. I understand you can’t just say “it doesn’t matter, we’ll come in fourth or fifth because we’ve got a long-term project”. But in the last four years this team has won two leagues, come second once, and won the FA Cup and the Capital One Cup. I have never felt the situation is that if I don’t win I am out whatever happens.’
Pellegrini won two trophies in his first season in charge. Two more than Louis van Gaal is likely to pick up in his first year.
He doesn’t bite on that particular comparison. But ahead of Wednesday night’s meeting with Barcelona he offers up another contrast: ‘Manchester United in all of that great era under [Sir Alex] Ferguson only won two Champions Leagues. Real Madrid went 32 years without winning the European Cup. It is important to be there in the later rounds but you can’t think that not being there is a disaster.’ 

This is half a call for calm and half a call to arms from Manchester City’s manager. There is no need to panic, there is also no justification for doubting in his ability. He is proud of his record as a coach.
‘Maybe it wasn’t enough at Villarreal that we only got to the Champions League semi-final. I hope someone can do even better at Malaga where we reached the Champions League quarter-finals, or at San Lorenzo where we won the league and broke records in Argentina,’ he says.
And it’s when he’s asked about his playing career that the fire in him really lights. There is even a rare raising of the voice when he talks about days spent as a centre back at Universidad de Chile. 
‘If you want to say I was a disaster of a player then say it. But give me another disaster of a player who played almost 500 games across 14 years.’
On Wednesday in the Nou Camp he says the priority is to win on the night and to not fall into the red-card trap again - Gael Clichy was sent off at the Etihad.
‘You can talk about tactics and technique but if you go a man down against Barcelona, you’re put in a terrible position. It is not a disgrace to get knocked out by them. Their squad, if it is not the best in the world, it is the second best. No other team can put together Leo Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez but I want to play them with 11 and if they knock us out then let that be because they were better than us.’

Barcelona’s 2-1 lead established at the Etihad three weeks ago came courtesy of Suarez, who they bought for £75m in the summer while Financial Fair Play regulations put the squeeze on City and stopped them buying the exceptional player, the ‘crack’, as Pellegrini calls it, that he still believes the team needs.
‘This year we improved the squad while working within those limits. What we did not do was bring in a crack. I think this team now needs a crack, another special player just to give us that sense that we are now at another level.
‘We have [Sergio] Aguero. We have very good players. But the Champions League is very different to the Premier League.’
Last season they won the league but it’s a triumph that Pellegrini believes has unfairly gone down in history as the title Liverpool lost instead of the one Manchester City won.

‘We were fighting on all fronts. We won the Capital One Cup, reached the quarter-finals of the FA Cup, played in the Champions League and we won the League scoring 157 goals,’ he says.
‘Liverpool only had one competition and that’s an enormous advantage. And the slip from [Steven] Gerrard? They lost that game 2-0, not 1-0. If he had not slipped, does it end in a draw? We’d still have been two points ahead of them. So why was it Liverpool losing the league and not us winning it?’
Is the bar set higher for City because of the riches that have come their way? 
‘Perhaps,’ he says. ‘But this year Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United have all spent more than us. People don’t accept that we are trying to become a big club in a very short time. I don’t think there’s such a difference between the top five or six squads.’
His domestic managerial rivals would argue with that. What none of them would contest is the need for a mid-winter break. Aside from the long-debated ill effects felt by the national team, Pellegrini believes the fixture list seriously hampers English sides in European competition, especially in the round of 16.
‘December and January are very tough months because of the number of games. You reach an important part of the season and you are not in optimum shape because there is no winter break as there is in other countries.
‘English football gives other leagues an advantage. There are some traditions you can’t change, I realise that. Boxing Day is non-negotiable. But you can’t play nine games in December and nine in January. You have to stop at some point.’

The absence of a mid-winter break is like FFP, another weight that rests disproportionately on English clubs and on City in particular.
‘It’s anti-competitive, it’s absurd,’ he says of the enforced financial restrictions. ‘And meanwhile in Spain you have a club that earns €140m [from TV money] and another that earns €10m. Does that not distort the competition too?
‘There are big clubs with enormous debts and this club has zero debts. Instead of doing what you want to do in six years you have to do it in 14. Why? You are not owing money to anyone.’
Manchester City have pumped investment into the Etihad Campus but Pellegrini warns a Barcelona-style super generation is not going to sprout up overnight.
‘Barça had a lot of players come through together but for the last three or four years they have not produced any for the first team. This club has been committed to bringing through youngsters for seven years now. But if you are taking boys in at 10 or 12 years of age you would normally need at least eight years to start seeing the results.
'When you get one good player come through who makes the first team the club will save £40m or £50m. And that player will come through for sure.’

The mentality of perennial winners is another thing that needs time to develop.
‘It’s that feeling a great club transmits that there is an obligation to keep winning. This is a great club in terms of its support but it had gone a long time without being used to winning things.’
There is also a desire to make success sustainable and marry it to a certain playing style.
‘If we were to win the Champions League this season the owners wouldn’t say “right, job done, we achieved what we set out to do.” They want to aspire to win it every season. And not winning the Champions League any way possible, hammering the ball up the pitch or cheating just to win it. You can win it that way once but to have repeated success you need a foundation which is your style of football.
‘You can’t score a goal and shut down the game with everyone back kicking the ball away so you can win 1-0. You’ll be successful sometimes but the Premier League is selling for £6bn and 20 million people watch you in the Champions League. You have to respect that too.’

Some of this may or may not be a reference to City’s biggest domestic rivals and their manager, Jose Mourinho, who Pellegrini has history with.
When it’s mischievously put to him that Chelsea will still drop points and allow others back into the title race because there is a ‘campaign’ against them, he says: ‘Well that comes under the concept of “Anything goes if it means you win”. It creates distrust.’
And stressing that he is not talking about any one team in particular he says: ‘There are coaches and players who are more and more held up as role models. And so behaviour is important. And to have a team that doesn’t play or that is constantly breaking up the play, going for the referee – I don’t think that is the way. You have to look after the image.’
All very well to extol the virtues of fair play but are there not other values that City fail to adhere to? Is there not also a responsibility to maintain an English core to their team? 
‘It is important to have English players but can you sign them?’ he asks rhetorically.
‘You are talking about trying to sign players from clubs that won’t sell them. Let’s say you want to buy [Luke] Shaw: £35m for a left back. I’m not sure about spending that much money when we have [Gael] Clichy and [Aleksandar] Kolarov.

‘Can you get [Raheem] Sterling? Maybe if you go to Liverpool with £100m you can. If I want an English player in the position of [David] Silva who is there? Maybe [Wayne] Rooney, but who else?
City do have one English outfield player and to hear Pellegrini talk about him it makes his likely departure at the end of the season all the more unfathomable.
‘It would be very difficult to find a more complete player than [James] Milner’ he says. ‘There are players who are better technically. There are quicker players. There are players who head the ball better. But show me a player who does all the things that Milner does well and there isn’t one.
‘And whatever position I put him in he plays well: at full-back – which is the only place he doesn’t like playing– attacking midfield, wide, or as a striker. I used him this season as a forward and the team was scoring three goals a game.
‘You leave him on the bench and he is furious, but watch him during the game, encouraging and shouting. And in the next training session he kills it for 95 minutes. It’s very difficult to find another Milner – an intelligent player, with big balls and a massive heart.’
Milner was left out of the Burnley debacle but is likely to be involved against Barca and will be in the trenches with his manager for the run-in that Pellegrini says will not turn him into a wreck no matter how intense things become. 

‘Any coach who has managed a big club in Argentina can manage anywhere in the world,’ he says.
‘Here the pressure is “normal”. There, it’s every day, and it’s life and death. I’ve never had a problem with pressure because I believe in my own ability. Last year I wanted to show I could win a major league in Europe. This year the challenge is to repeat the title or to do better in the Champions League.’
As a player he admits he was ‘always fighting with everyone’ and making decisions based on emotion. 
‘When I made the transition from player to coach, I realised I needed to change completely,’ he says.
‘I was still young, I would fight with players, literally, if it was required. I was 35 years old and you realise that it can’t be like that. If you have young players who need guidance you have to transmit calm and not be acting hysterically on the touchline.’
Some of the old Pellegrini came out last year when City lost the first leg to Barcelona at the Etihad and he verbally attacked the referee for sending off Martin Demichelis.
‘Very few times have I regretted something I said, so much,’ he says. ‘Especially as there are refereeing mistakes that are impossible to understand but when I looked again at the Demichelis incident, it is true he is outside the area, but two centimetres outside the area, in other words a mistake that is perfectly understandable.

‘It’s easy to see it on the television [immediately after the game] and you’re screaming “No it’s not a penalty” and you are still immersed in the match and you explode.’
He says it served to remind him of the hotheaded temperament he had left behind. Perhaps with so much at stake some City fans would like to see a little more fire now?
‘People maybe see it as a defect, to appear to be passive, but it’s not easy to change your personality. It’s one of the hardest things I have done. And being calm doesn’t mean being content,’ he says.
‘And I’m not content, not because of any sort of debate about, “will he go, if he doesn’t win something?” but because my own targets are still there to be met.
‘Internally you have to be strong, externally they can say what they like. The season is not over yet. There is a lot still to fight for.’

Although he tries to play it mr cool, you can see some slight digs (if you want to) talking about FFP and not having another 'crack' player like Aguero.

The FFP thing though..he's spot on.

which does in turn justifies the point of not getting the big name "crack player" interesting to see if there is a reaction from Milner? or will he be of the mindset that the boss is saying those nice things to appease me & get me to sign the new contract?

Fair points, but i just wanted to bring up another few things he says:

"‘This year we improved the squad while working within those limits".

Who exactly is he eluding to with that quote?

"Pellegrini won two trophies in his first season in charge. Two more than Louis van Gaal is likely to pick up in his first year".

But LVG inherited at crap team and is slowly making them better, whereas MP inherited a bloody good team and is slowly making them crap.

"‘It would be very difficult to find a more complete player than [James] Milner’ he says. ‘There are players who are better technically. There are quicker players. There are players who head the ball better. But show me a player who does all the things that Milner does well and there isn’t one.
‘And whatever position I put him in he plays well: at full-back – which is the only place he doesn’t like playing– attacking midfield, wide, or as a striker. I used him this season as a forward and the team was scoring three goals a game.
‘You leave him on the bench and he is furious, but watch him during the game, encouraging and shouting. And in the next training session he kills it for 95 minutes. It’s very difficult to find another Milner – an intelligent player, with big balls and a massive heart."

Yet you and the club still won't offer him that extra year he's asking for.

depending on reports though den, 1st of all Milner was offered 3 years but he wanted 4. Next report was he was offered 2 years and wants 3. The other point is: it is the club which offers the contracts & negotiate not pellegrini, how often do you here a manager say at a press conference that our club are talking to sed players advisors, & whenever a new contract is signed it is always Soriano with player for photo shoot.

Mp inherited a club that had a multitude of factions within it which was destroying it from within, Van Gaal inherited a squad built by Moyes, which also had factions within it, Though Moyes only added Mata & Fellaini to Fergies last Squad. The squads were not really that different, he was the one who let vidic & Evra & Ferdinand go.

Totally agree oz, but Vidic wanted to leave, Ferdinand wouldn't get in Burys team and Luke Shaw (who a host of clubs were after) replaced the aging Evra. He also brought in Blind, Di Maria, Rojo, Flacao, Herrera and Valdes (for next season)....and they seem to have improved the team.
 
MP has brought in 10 to plug those fractions within the club and team, hand on heart how many of the these have improved our team?:
Fernandinho
Negredo
Navas

Demichellis
Fernando
Mangala
Sagna
Caballero
Lampard
Jovetic

Negredo did at the start, but tailed off horribly after his injury, subsequently left and we never replaced him....leaving Milner to play as a striker
Lampard has had one or two moments and Fernandinho is ok, Demichellis has proved to be an half decent stop gap purchase. But the rest (including Mangala) haven't imo improved us at all.

He's right about the politics of FFP, but FFP didn't force us into poor choices last summer.

58 mill for di maria  falcao 6 mill loan hardly have improved them but what an outlay. For us think back to the season pel took over We had crystalli Richards, Nastasic who had gone totally off the boil. To improve from some of the players we had just would not have been feasible given ffp

I do agree Fernando has not been half the signing I expected ,

Sagna has done ok hasn't improved us but hasn't regressed us either as we had a choicer of a continually injured rb or one with prem experience who can step in & do a job. Still don't understand the signing of Caballero 

 Everyone was after Jovetic not just us came with a big reputation did not live up to it Mancini wanted him so too Liverpool united arsenal Juventus etc

Lampard was never going to be signed to improve the squad he was their solely to make up the hg quot

 Mangala will improve us given time he is only 23

I think Pellegrini had made up his mind in his 1st pre season Nastasic & Lescott were not up to his liking. The injuries to vinny meant that one or both had to stay the signing of Demichellis was to replace one of the above but then Demichellis was out for 6 weeks on signing, Kompany injured,Nastasic injured  Garcia filling in at centre back & transfer window closed, Hence why we did not improve our centre back position. I was hoping for a lot more from Mangala especially after a very impressive debut but I do believe he will turn out to be a top signing.

The other point I should make is prior to the season opener we always get the khaldoon summary.

Interestingly last season I remember quite vividly him saying he was really excited about the coming season & that the transfer business was done early & that we as fans would be really excited by the new faces for the coming season, so how much spin did Begiristain & Sorriano put on the caliber of signings.

Good interview.

The cynical part of me would say this is well orchestrated by the club to keep him for another year.

I agree with everything he has said though.

Fair points as always oz, but for some reason (FFP related or not) i will always feel MP has taken us backwards, when his job ultimately was to take us forward.

I think that Txiki and Seriano are hoping to buy enough time to get Pep. The owners will have loved the footy Barca played when he was there and would dearly like to replicate that period of footballing brilliance. That's the only way I can see us keeping Pel and the other two amigos.

Since we won our first title in nearly 40 years, are we better as a team, squad and club than before?

It depends I suppose on expectations. I thought the last season under Mancini was frustrating but winning the f.a Cup against Wigan would be some consolation for not putting up  astronger title challenge. well we all know how that panned out.

Last season was not a good start but we had a great 3 months oct to jan then the blip then to kick on the way we did at the end was fantastic.

Total optimism for this season as lessons learnt from last title defence.

Again total frustration at lack of fight & now a real nervy run in.

To answer your question dawg are we better, I think in terms of a team no as we lost key players such as de jong, Teves & one I still rate regardless of the opinions of some AJ. He gave us a goal scoring option he could beat a man easier & far more comfortably than Navas his delivery was good also in terms of passing & deadball deliveries ie corners.

Trouble is while we can put up with an off season, we simply cannot risk the Top 4 finish.  We struggle enough to get the top players away from London and a year without CL and what will the like of Silva and Sergio want to do?  Yes we pay them well but lose them and we really are back to square 1.

I know there is no god given right to be in the Top 4 but I bet you Tony Pullis would have got us there with our wealth of talent to all those deriding him on the other thread.

MP is still a lucky manager and has performed abysmally this season.  Another season fills me with complete dread.

What Pulis would have done is made damn sure we were hard to beat and then allow our attacking talent to get the goals.

He has taken us forward in some aspects - adopting the high line and increased possession that the club wants to do and got us out of the groups twice in the CL.

In other aspects (the overall strength of the squad), we have regressed. Longer term, it does need to be considered that amortisation and wages have both significantly improved though to allow us to now buy big and pass FFP.

I do agree with his sentiment that what he did last season has been underrated by a lot of people. To say he was lucky based on last season or his career so far is bordering on ludicrous to me.

The next few weeks are pivotal though. Poor performance on Wednesday and any further drop in the league and he's a goner regardless of the hearts and minds exercise the club is doing. Personally, I'm 50/50 about it but that's more down to my opinion on modern football than anything else.

I think he'll be given next season...then the likes of Pep comes into the fray in his last year of his contract.

Personally - I think two things:

1. The squad is definitely worse than 2 years ago.

2. The football this season has been nothing short of shit under MP. This is down to his tactics, not the team, not the players. He's been overly stubborn in the face of criticism. It would not surprise me one single bit, if he plays 4-4-2 again tomorrow with Bony and Aguero up front.

I don't think he's utilised the likes of Lampard effectively. Nasri has one bad game and gets dropped. TLMLF has been nothing short of useless....after everybody made some points about how we play better with him in the team - since his return we've been worse with him in the team.

The Manager just hasn't got the 'balls' like Milner has to drop TLMLF...that's poor management IMO and we have regressed. However, it wouldn't surprise me to go and win tomorrow, that's how unpredictable our performances have been this season.

I'm not so sure he will be gone next season if (when) we crash out tomorrow.  I don't quite understand why our players are not motivated to win - what more motivation do they want - other than CL glory/premier league champions and big big pay checks.  We all admire Tony Pulis for saving Palace and probably WBA now - but his football with Stoke was dire to watch.  Don't know what the answer is - the wheels have certainly fallen off.

Pulis? No thanks....we're currently 2nd, not 2nd from bottom FFS!

blueboy wrote:I think he'll be given next season.

If we finish outside of the top 4, he'll be gone.

It'll be interesting to see how the seasonticket sales go for next season if we do.

It's both to me in terms of the players and the tactics. I don't mind the system and never have done though, any formation is viable. It's how it has been played that has been the issue.

The way Pellegrini sets up his 442 (which is the formation we won both of our league titles using) relies on pushing high up the pitch and playing predominately in the opposition half. It relies hugely on getting the first goal, as that is what then entices the other team out which we then capitalise on.

Mancinis was different in that slower build up play is what created the gaps that we then exploited with fluid movement. The issues we had in his season after we won the league was that the movement stopped so we just looked ineffective.

This year, we are not getting the early goal as the tempo isn't high enough. Due to continuing to push it, we leave huge gaps that the opposition then exploit as the games go on and we take more risks.

It is Pellegrinis fault completely that we aren't seeking a different style to get the breakthrough. It is the players fault though that they are not performing to the level they did last year in terms of both the creation of and finishing of chances. Dzeko and Aguero have missed a ridiculous amount of chances in comparison to last year, which means the whole rest of the game then changes when we don't get that early goal. Couple that with the loss of form of the wingbacks, who created the most chances of any in Europe last year, and it leads to performances that look lethargic. Only Burnley have covered more distance than us though - it is quality more than effort (I'll give you Toure though )

So how to fix it. That depends on if it is short term or long term that is the priority. The short term fixes would be to drop the defensive line deeper to increase solidity and drop a forward back to allow for increased passing in the middle of the park. Long term, that means that players don't get used to the high pressing tactic that the club want to employ and just makes the transition even harder.

This summer, we have to buy players that are more suited to the high press, particularly on forward positions, and I fully expect us to buy big. If we do that, then we need to keep a manager that utilises that style of play - Pellegrini, Ancelotti or Guardiola.

If the other two can't be attained this summer, then unless we see the decline worsen until the end of the season, then I expect Pellegrini to remain in his job. Short term, that won't please many I imagine. I personally would understand the logic though.

The problem will arise if we do not attain top 4. It then becomes important as someone said earlier to keep the likes of silva & Aguero. If the unthinkable happens & we don't attain top 4 then realistically how do we then entice the top players to join city. Money will not be the key factor it was 6/7 years ago as ffp has seen to that. I can only summise that some sort of commitment from pep or Ancelotti regarding taking over the following season may be the only way to help still attract the top players, or pel to have a barnstorming 15/16 sweeping all before him.

The rags managed to sign some good players after failing to qualify for CL football. I guess you could argue that their name carries more weight but if top players want to play in the premier European competition why sign with a big name if they aint in it?
If the logic is that they signed because they expect them to be back in it next season then the same logic could be applied to City should we fail to finish in the top 4, we will strengthen and be back challenging next season so why would top players not want to sign? i don't believe that would put them off, especially as we pay top dollar.

But we are not paying top dollar now if anything we are reducing what we offer & as you rightly said mcm Uniturd have the name & history we don't London has Arsenal & Chelsea. With City the guarantees are more of a risk we could quite easily being city plummet further, look at some of the players that supposedly turned us down, & that includes Falcao. Ok so it looks like we dodged a bullet with him but the point is there.

I'd still swap Falcao for Dzeko in a heartbeat..