Did Roberto Mancini Deserve to Be Sacked by Mancester City?

If we could see into Roberto Mancini's diary, it might look a little something like this:

13th May 2012

"AGUEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!" 

13th May 2013

"Oh"

As reported by the BBC, Roberto Mancini has finally been sacked after an entire 365 days without winning the Premier League title. Criminal really—it's amazing he didn't go sooner.

Roberto Di Matteo managed to go a whole 186 days without winning the Champions League before he was sacked last November. Mancini should count himself lucky in all honesty he managed to last so long.

In all seriousness, though, Mancini's sacking does seem incredibly harsh. But from the owners' point of view, Manchester City have been pretty awful for most of the season. They have invested a heck of a lot of money into the club and demand yearly success as a result. Whilst it may seem a little harsh, it is a sign of the times that it was far from unexpected. 

So what were the factors behind Mancini's sacking?

Poor Signings

Last summer, Manchester City failed to build on their title winning side. Mancini complained about a lack of support in the transfer market, and rather than being proactive, he seemed content to sit back and moan about the fact he had missed out on several of his key targets. 

Javi Garcia, Scott Sinclair, Maicon, Matija Nastasic and Jack Rodwell were not deemed "A-List" enough, disregarding the fact that they cost a combined £50 million or so (or in Manchester City terms: 1.76 James Milners). 

You can understand Mancini's frustration to some extent, Sir Alex Ferguson has shown how important it is to constantly improve and evolve your team, regardless of past successes. But it is still hard to feel too much for Mancini. In all honesty, a man who has spent £291 million since January 2009 will never garner too much sympathy from too many people. 

Manchester United may have gained the initiative in the summer with the signing of Robin van Persie, but Manchester City still should have been able to compete at least a bit more convincingly with their cross-town rivals. 

On paper, Manchester City's best XI is still arguably better than United's. Working under the assumption that the team Roberto Mancini put out against Wigan Athletic in the FA Cup Final on Saturday was his best XI, only Rio Ferdinand, Michael Carrick and Robin van Persie would be clear-cut favourites to have started had they been playing Manchester City. 

Mancini has been hard done by and has every right to feel that way. He was sacked just one year after bringing the trophy back to a club that had not won it for 34 years. The more you think about it, the more ridiculous it seems.

Jupp Heynckes' Bayern Munich side came second in their league, cup and the Champions League last season, and they're not doing so badly this campaign. Sometimes loyalty and consistency work out okay.

But then Roberto Mancini need only pick up his phone and (under the assumption that everyone in football has everyone else's number) give Claudio Ranieri, Jose Mourinho, Avram Grant, Luiz Felipe Scolari, Carlo Ancelotti, Andre Villas-Boas or Roberto Di Matteo a call. They'll tell you how ruthless wealthy owners can be. Even for one year, anything but first place is simply not good enough (actually, even first place isn't good enough sometimes).

Another Poor Season in Europe

It is now a well-known fact in English football that wealthy, ruthless owners covet success in Europe above all else.

With this knowledge in mind, the writing must have been on the wall as long ago as December for Roberto Mancini, having seen his Manchester City side crash out of the Champions League in the group stage for the second consecutive season.

Their owners may have turned a blind eye to last season's Champions League exit due to certain unfortunate factors. They were debutantes who were placed in an extremely tough group with Bayern Munich and Napoli. They were also unfortunate in that their 10 points accrued and three-plus goal difference would have actually been enough to see them through in six of the other seven groups. Unlucky stuff.

This season however, they suffered the embarrassment of becoming the first English team to not even win a single game in a Champions League campaign. They couldn't even get into the Europa League.

Whilst they were unlucky to lose to Real Madrid in the opening game, having been 2-1 up with less than five minutes remaining, they were equally as fortunate to get a point out of Borussia Dortmund in their next game. City were unbelievably only 1-0 down, having been on the end of an unholy tonking from Dortmund for the best part of 90 minutes, when Mario Balotelli managed to nick a draw with one of his trademark "cool-as-you-like" penalties with stoppage time approaching. 

It was the two games against Ajax where it all properly fell apart for Mancini and Man City. Failing to beat the Dutch side home or away, something both Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid managed to do, meant they were already out of the running with only four games played. Needless to say, it was pretty embarrassing.

Their group draw was extremely tough, yes, but the results were disappointing and the performances were abject to the extreme. A second season of failure in Europe was the first nail in Roberto Mancini's Manchester City coffin—it was something that he could not recover from.

The System Became Too Obvious

Much in the same way Barcelona's weaknesses were exploited in their recent Champions League semi-final drubbing at the hands of Bayern Munich, Manchester City have suffered from their system becoming far too obvious and easily exploitable. 

For the first several months of their title winning season, Manchester City played an incredibly high-tempo brand of possession-based football, which very few teams could deal with.

Either Dzeko or Balotelli would play the role of the classic No. 9 high up the pitch, occupying the two centre backs, Aguero would play in the space just behind, and Silva and Nasri would start from the flanks before cutting inside to drag their respective full-backs across the pitch. 

This differed greatly from the quite robust, often depressing 4-3-3 formation that Mancini had used in the 18 months beforehand. The switch to such a fluid, attacking system at the start of the last campaign caught many teams by surprise.

However, when it came to all the reverse fixtures in the second half of the season, teams had learnt from their mistakes and tailored their tactics to suit Manchester City's new approach. Mancini's side then began to struggle for awhile, especially away from home where they struggled to break teams down and dropped plenty of points.

Then just as Manchester United looked as though they were going to run away with the Premier League come March or April, Mancini reintroduced Carlos Tevez. Tevez and Aguero formed a lethal partnership that reinvigorated Manchester City and they ended up stealing the title away from Manchester United, who faltered badly, with a run of six wins from their last six games.

This season however, all their star players have been incredibly underwhelming in the pursuit of defending their title. Sergio Aguero, Edin Dzeko, David Silva, Samir Nasri and Yaya Toure have all been disappointing to varying degrees. Mario Balotelli was moved on in January after becoming too much of a nuisance.  

Only Carlos Tevez has had a better 2012-13 campaign than 2011-12 campaign (helped mostly by the fact he spent most of last season playing golf in Argentina). At the back, only Pablo Zabaleta has had a standout season. 

The tempo has been a lot slower, and the play has been a lot less incisive. They managed to keep up with Manchester United in the first half of the campaign due to a mixture of sporadic good performances from Tevez and Toure and an impressive burst of "super-sub" goals from Edin Dzeko.

As the season has worn on though, Tevez has looked more and more lackadaisical, Aguero has never looked 100 percent fit, and Edin Dzeko has looked frustrated at his role of impact substitute, as well as struggling greatly to impress when given an opportunity to start.

Can you blame the players for this? Or was Mancini to blame? The powers that be at Manchester City seem to have made up their mind on this. Whilst at times Mancini's decision-making was inspired (pretty much everything he did with Yaya Toure), at times it really was found wanting (such as the almost suicidal decision to play with a back three in games at the start of the season). At times he also seemed to lack key motivational skills.

After last season's trip to play Everton at Goodison Park, which Manchester City lost 1-0 after a distinctly poor display, ESPN.co.uk reported that Mancini admitted he had underestimated David Moyes' team.

Amazingly, we're talking here about the same Everton team that had beaten Manchester City on their two previous trips to Goodison Park, and the side that beat Mancini's Man City in six of their eight league meetings. How he managed to underestimate them, only he can really know.

Links to the FA Cup Final Performance

The loss to Everton links in nicely with Manchester City's shock FA Cup Final defeat at the hands of Wigan Athletic last Saturday—the game that turned out to be Mancini's last in charge.

Mancini seemed to completely underestimate Wigan's strengths, putting out a team that (whilst his best on paper) was completely outmaneuvered by Roberto Martinez's impeccable planning. 

Mancini gave off the impression of a man who had selected a team under the assumption that any 11 players he had selected would be able to beat Roberto Mancini's side. 

Wigan's back three dealt comfortably with Aguero and Tevez, who both played extremely high up the pitch, and Silva and Nasri both made the game too narrow by constantly cutting in, failing to exploit Wigan's lack of full-backs by not stretching the game by staying out wide.

Mancini had not learnt from past lessons, Wigan Athletic fully deserved the win. Manchester City end the campaign trophy-less—something, as it now transpires, that is unacceptable at the Etihad Stadium.

Even before their dour display in the FA Cup Final, it seemed as though Mancini was already on his way out. Whilst the FA Cup should not be considered just consolation silverware (although it increasingly is thanks to the FA), Mancini would have known from the start of the season that the Premier League title and a decent run in the Champions League were the least to be expected from the ruthless and demanding Manchester City owners.

Perhaps the only real surprise about his sacking was that it didn't happen in December, when they finished bottom of their group in the Champions League. Overall I can't imagine too many outside of the blue half of Manchester will be too sad to see him go. 

So one year to the day from leading Manchester City to Premier League glory, Mancini has been firmly been shown the door, crazy and unfair though it may seem on the whole. This has been the season where managerial loyalty has truly, finally, gone to die.

Times must be tough for Premier League managers when the man who won the competition has been shown the door. Times must be even tougher considering its probably not even the most unfair sacking of the season. Extraordinarily, it's probably not even in the top three. Football eh? Madness.