Response to Spurs_SSP

( Original post by Spurs-Such Small Portions here: http://bit.ly/nWWIr9 )

Hmm. Would that it were so simple. Money has made City a much improved team on last season's bunch, but a lack of it hasn't made us a much worse team, unless you reckon the trickle of last season's bit-part players from our squad has somehow eroded their former strength. Obviously, Champions League adventure aside (which would have added lustre even to a relegation season), we didn't look all that great last season, but it wasn't especially bad. In terms of players, we've not had much turnaround since we got fourth spot the season before last, so (assuming form hasn't dipped hugely from a once-in-a-lifetime peak for the majority of the squad, and the year and a bit of ageing hasn't rendered them all fit for the knacker's yard) we ought to be entitled to expect similar - albeit not quite as good, allowing for other teams' improvement - performances. Of course, everyone's entitled to a bad day at the office, and no question that injuries have taken their toll on our first XI, but the question really has to be - has a handful of megabucks signings (Nasri, Aguero, Savic and Clichy) really transformed City that much, or has Mancini simply (finally) taught his assortment of overpaid mercenaries how to play football? And has our squad really stagnated and depreciated that much, or is Harry getting found out as a bit one-dimensional?

Yes, City have the funds to assemble a squad of whoever they like, and in time their team will be so full of Galacticos that the original Galacticos will end up looking like present-day Liverpool, but currently it's pretty clear that the majority of their players - while very good - are overpaid, with perhaps a small handful of worldclass exceptions (for my money, Kompany, Nasri, Aguero - Dzeko just happens to be in amazing form, much like VdV was for us this time last year). The rest are being paid a premium for taking part in a club-development project in rainy Manchester. No, we couldn't ever match their wages in our current state (without going the way of Leeds), but nor should we want to: we'd be breaking our wage structure for players not significantly better than our current crop (except, of course, up front).

A lot of parallels are being drawn between our thumping and Arsenal's, and rightly so (both teams have injury problems, have had protracted transfer sagas throughout pre-season, and got their tactics horribly wrong on the day), but I think the financial comparison is a bit of a red herring. Yes, City have essentially unlimited money, and United are the biggest business in football, but if you look at United's team on Saturday, although they spent over £50m this summer on De Gea, Jones and Young, their top earners are apparently Rooney, Ferdinand, Berbatov and Giggs; only two of whom featured, and Giggs only off the bench at five-one, with the game effectively over. It seems unlikely a team made up of names like Evans, Jones, Smalling, Anderson, Cleverly, Wellbeck and Young are earning wages that would massively break Arsenal's wage structure, and the money they're making on the Emirates relocation (plus player sales) means by most estimates they have around £100m sloshing around in their bank account - their refusal to change their wage structure (unlike Levy with ours) is borne of Wenger's 'philosophy' (some might say 'obstinance').

Meanwhile, although City have spent far more than either ourselves, United or the Gooners (indeed, their net spend in the last decade has been higher than all three of us put together), we've outspent both United in six of the last ten seasons, and the Gooners in seven out of ten (source: bit.ly/ppCB0p). We haven't splashed the cash (yet) this transfer window, but should we really need to? A half-decent striker would make a world of difference; some (more) cover at centre-back (since Harry seems to hate Bassong) would firm up the back line; and Harry would really rather love to do a Dalglish/Comolli and sign every central midfielder going, but these are (with the exception of the striker) minor additions rather than massive overhauls. As for the striker - there aren't many good ones around, and the few there are don't want to come to us, partly because admittedly we don't pay highly enough, and partly because we're not a firm top-four contender. Hopefully, Adebayor will mark the improvement we need (except in the one remaining fixture against City - cups not withstanding) and represent a great bit of business, so really Harry's bleatings about the lack of signings are a smoke screen for his inability to identify what's going wrong.

I'm not in agreement with the "Harry out" grumblers, but I don't think injuries, lack of money for signings/wages, and form/morale were really as significant a factor in our demolition by City as the simple fact that Harry got his game-plan hopelessly wrong, much as Wenger did later in the day. That's not an argument for throwing the baby out with the bathwater and sacking a manager who has taken us further than we've ever been in the modern era (just like the players, a manager can't go bad in just over a year), but equally I don't think we should be making excuses for him

If he goes, I'm not sure who we can bring in who'll be any better, but I do think if he continues to stick with his naive "have a go" 4411 tactics and make excuses in the press at every given opportunity when we don't perform (the recent "terrible pre season" comment being a fantastic way to abdicate responsibility for a result while doing no more than compounding the symptom it identifies, further damaging morale), he is in danger of quickly falling into the Ramos trap where anyone (Andy Gray, Me, Sandra Redknap FFS) coming in is going to do a better job than him of lifting the mood. He needs to get hold of things quickly, get us playing tight (and - Spurs forgive me - ugly) football so we can get a few results and build some confidence. My fear is that he's simply manoeuvring to paint himself as a powerless victim of Enic and Levy's 'stupidity', so as to preserve his reputation when the FA come knocking after Fabio departs. Even if that's the case, a few more drubbings like this weekend's will surely devalue his stock to Allardyce levels, so hopefully he'll make a bit more effort for Wolves. Fingers crossed. COYS.