The Fixture List is Out!

Next season's Premier League fixture list is now out, and the shock is we play everyone twice! Home and away! More seriously, here are a few observations:

• Two of the newly promoted sides in the first 3 games could be tricky. The promoted teams are often more dangerous early in the season while confidence is still high and before the reality of the struggle ahead sets in. So this could be a tricky time to play them.
• The games against United and Chelsea are relatively early in the season. I expect these two, and ourselves, to be the main title challengers but the fact the games are early means they are unlikely to be decisive.
• Everton away as the second to last game. Lets hope we don't need a result as we have a shocking record there.
• The fixture list looks fairly balanced. There's no obvious run of tricky games. The worst is playing Spurs away followed 3 days later by Chelsea at home at the end on January and beginning of February.
• Swansea away on New Year's Day - good luck to those travelling with the hangover.

Welcome the Manchester City, Manuel Pellegrini

No sooner had I asked where the new manager was than he was announced. By a coincidence, his former club Malaga appointed a new manager today. Or maybe it wasn't a coincidence if some of the rumours circulating online are to be believed.

If all the many profiles of Pellegrini that have been published over the last few weeks are to be believed, then this is an excellent appointment. His record is also excellent, getting the best out of whatever resources he has. The only thing lacking is trophies, but his teams always seem to over-achieve.

Hopefully this does turn out to be the excellent appointment it appears. Welcome to Manchester.

Where is the new manager?

This is starting to get a little worrying. Where is the new manager for Manchester City? It is now:

• 31 days since Roberto Mancini was sacked
• 25 days since the end of the season
• 12 days since the end of the La Liga season

and still now manager has been appointed. If all the rumours are true, a deal with Manuel Pelligrini was agreed some time ago. If true, then surely the appointment should have been finalised by now? The longer this drags on the more likely something will stop him being appointed. I've already seen one report mention a 'minor technicality' holding things up. Is this code for something else?

I can remember a previous occasion when a chairman thought he had his man but it dragged on, then fell through. The chairman? Francis Lee. Who did he think had agreed to be manager? Brian Kidd. Who did we end up with? Alan Ball. I hope history isn't repeating itself.

Why Falcao was never moving to the Premier League

In an excellent article by Michael Berlin on Grantland, there is a good description of the strange background to Falcao's move to Monaco. It is essentially a story about the third-party ownership of players and how it impacts the players career. For me a small detail within the story stood out. In a section describing how the club Falcao was transferred to was chosen is the following:

"There are only a few potential buyers ....... Manchester City, Chelsea, and even United are out because ....... the Premier League doesn't allow for the transfer of third-party owned players."

While playing for Atlético Madrid, Falcao was part owned by the club, and part owned by a company called Doyen Sports. Under Premier League rules, if Falcao was to move to a club in the Premier League then the club would have to fully own him. Part ownership, with the rest owned by a third party, is banned.

I'm not going to go into the details of why it's banned here (the article covers many of the issues) but the press have been covering rumours of Falcao being signed by a Premier League club for months (see here and here for example) without ever once mentioning the fact he was part-owned by a third party, as far as I can recall.

This is a huge piece of information to leave out of the story as it has a huge impact on any potential transfer. The third-party interest in the player is there to make money. As the article explains in more detail, young players are funded early in their career as an investment and the third-party then looks to make money over the course of the career as the player becomes more successful. One way this happens is through lucrative transfers.

If the player was to move to a Premier League club then the third-party would have to sell their stake in the player. Doing so, they would be giving up all future returns on their investment. Even if they were willing to do so, the least they would do is demand a much higher transfer fee from a Premier League club than from a club that allowed them to retain their involvement. This would be to compensate them for future earnings they would be giving up.

The effect of this is to make players who have third-party involvement either off-limits, or considerably more expensive for Premier League clubs. Yet from the press reports over the last few months you would not have guessed that Falcao was subject to this restriction and given how common the practise is in certain parts of the world, gives me another reason to doubt the accuracy of transfer rumours reported in the press.

Some thoughts on the first signing of the summer

According to several reports (such as here and here), Manchester City's first signing of the summer will be Jesús Navas for £17 million plus add-ons from Sevilla. On the face of it signing a pacy winger who has 23 caps for Spain is a good move. Last season City were very narrow, with the width provided by full-backs pushing forward. The only option to change this was Scott Sinclair, who hardly played and barely made an impact when he did.

It's also a good sign that the transfer business is starting early. Last summer City didn't get much done in the transfer window until vary late. When they did make signings it gave the impression that a lot of second choices were being picked up to get something done. This impression was backed up by the fact that of the players signed last summer, only Matija Nastasić could claim to be a first team regular. It was also frequently blamed by Roberto Mancini for the relatively poor season.

With any transfer there are risks, but this one does come with a big risk. Navas has a history of problems with homesickness (see this report for example). While there are reports this has been overcome, citing his recent involvement in Spain's successful World Cup and Euro 2012, a trip for a few weeks is very different from living permanently in another country. City do in depth research on all signings and will no doubt have plans in place to help him settle in but it does remain a significant risk.

Overall this looks a good signing, although one with a significant risk.

14 Years Ago Today - The Most Important Game in Manchester City's History?

Today is the 14th anniversary of arguably the most important game in Manchester City's history - the 1999 Division 2 Play-off Final. Most clubs would claim their most important game was a title or cup winning game. But for Manchester City I'd argue this play-off final is the clubs most important game ever.

Why? Because without it there probably would be no Aguero scoring a last minute goal to win the Premier League. Instead Manchester City could well be still down there alongside Leeds United and Sheffield Wednesday - big clubs struggling to recover from disastrous relegation's. City may well still be at Maine Road as well. This game occurred before construction had started on the Etihad Stadium. Would a Manchester City in Division 2 have been able to afford the conversion costs for the stadium after the Commonwealth Games? And the new stadium was a key reason why Shiekh Mansour chose Manchester City when he decided to buy a football team.

For me it is one of the best memories I have as a City supporter. I was lucky enough to be there and, while I won't go into the drama on the pitch that day, two off the pitch events have remained with me to this day.

At the full time whistle I was a bit of an emotional wreck. The drama of the last few minutes had been a true emotional rollercoaster and I'd felt the effects. A city fan was walking up the steps while we waited for extra time and stopped when he saw me, just gave me a big hug and just said 'I know', before walking off. It summed up for me how we all felt.

The second event happened a couple of hours after the game. I was staying with a friend who lived in London and met him after the game in the centre of London. He'd been watching the game in a pub and was telling me about the atmosphere there when I suddenly realised that I had no idea how good the game had been. In hindsight this seems absurd but I'd been so caught up in the emotional rollercoaster that it hadn't sunk in yet. So I asked him, and he looked at me as if I was stupid before saying it was one of the best games he'd ever seen.

What if.... the Mancini news hadn't broken when it did?

FA Cup Final 2013

The night before the 2013 FA Cup Final, strong rumours started circulating that Mancini would be sacked. By the morning all major newspapers and many other news sources were reporting this. There had been rumours for months that this may happen but nothing this strong. The question that has bugged me since then is why did it happen at that moment? And what was the source for this?

What I write here should not take anything away from Wigan's achievement. They were the better side on the day and fully deserved to win the FA Cup. However, there will always remain a big what if question about the day for me. What would have happened had this news not broken when it did? It clearly had an impact, not least among the fans who spent a lot of time letting the club now exactly what they though of it. How much impact did it have on the team that day is unclear. But given how poorly they played and the seeming lack of work rate from many players it isn't hard to suspect it did play a part.

So where did the story come from? It could hardly have come at a worse time than the day of the FA Cup Final. So was it leaked by someone who wanted to prevent Mancini winning the cup, which would have made it more difficult for the club to sack him? I have no idea but it remains a troubling possibility.

As for subsequent events, I don't think it had any impact on the decision to sack Mancini. That decision looks to have been made some time ago. All it ended up doing was forcing Manchester City to bring that forward a few weeks. It's likely he would have been sacked after the club returned from the post-season tour of the USA. So in the long run the only impact other than on the FA Cup Final is likely to be minor.