EPL Transfer News: Roberto Mancini Says He Will Sell Mario Balotelli This Summer

Manchester City head coach Roberto Mancini didn't have too many reasons to smile as he stared down a number of reporters in the Emirates Stadium.

He'd just seen his team slump to a forgettable 1-0 defeat to Arsenal on a sun-stroked Easter Sunday afternoon at the Emirates, during which the player he has defended with such steadfast rigor was sent off after a performance that looks likely to enter into that ignominious realm of villainy. 

Mario Balotelli has always been a basket case, but one always got the feeling that Mancini considered it a personal obligation—his great quest, perhaps—to help the troubled 21-year-old overcome his personal demons and become a more sturdy professional.

Yet for all of Mancini's work—the tough love interspersed with the defense of character—Balotelli has not changed.

At no point was that more evident than against Arsenal, where the Ghanaian-born Italian striker toed a fine line between tough tackling and abject cruelty, lunging into full-blooded challenges as if they were going out of style.

He finally received his marching orders by way of a second yellow card just before the final whistle. And that's the least of it—once Premier League officials have a second look at his first booked offense on Alex Song, it will likely be a three-match ban for the man. 

And so, having seen all this, Mancini was forced to answer to a hub of reporters who knew exactly what angle they were going to play up.

Maybe it was resignation. Maybe Mancini was merely tired of always having to deal with the Balotelli question.

But when he told reporters he would "probably" have to sell Balotelli this summer, one got the sense that the Italian manager, who coached Balotelli at Inter Milan, was finally seeing that the game was up.

Like Mourinho once said while he managed Balotelli at Inter, the striker appears uncoachable. There's not too much you can do for someone when that's the case.

Maybe then you have to wipe your hands clean. Not like Pontius Pilate, mind you, not out of exasperation, but because the relationship simply hasn't worked. It's best, at that moment, to simply leave.

Mario Balotelli needs help. One doesn't have to think hard about what kind of post-career life he's headed for should he not make some serious lifestyle changes. But that goes both ways: he cannot expect people to keep helping him when he won't do anything to help himself.

"Why always me?" may seem a plea of desperation, but in order to elicit sympathy one must make himself worthy of that sentiment. 

Going out and tackling anything in view is certainly not the best way to start.

So it appears, for all intents and purposes, that the Balotelli project at Manchester City may soon be at an end. For some, it can't seem to have come soon enough.

(And with the way City have tanked this season, one might see Mancini exit stage left as well.)