Redknapp

[Mike J]

http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528, ... 00,00.html

whilst i think a point away at spurs is good i 100% agree with 'arry this time. if one thing is to be our downfall this season i think it will be very negative tactics away from home. I like mancini but he had a tendancy to set up this way quite a bit last season.

hope it isnt the norm against lesser teams than spurs.

[Murph]

I think that's why the milner and Balotelli signings will be important for us. Mancini I would think will play milner central alongside any two of Yaya, DE Jong and Barry with Balotelli leading the line with Tevez and Silva playing off him, that line up looks far more attacking than the one sent out at Spuds but isn't really diminished much defensively.

[OliverHardy]

http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11661_6315400,00.html

whilst i think a point away at spurs is good i 100% agree with 'arry this time. if one thing is to be our downfall this season i think it will be very negative tactics away from home. I like mancini but he had a tendancy to set up this way quite a bit last season.

hope it isnt the norm against lesser teams than spurs.

1. Let the red faced prick worry about his own team and not ours, he is a football manager now the season has started and not a Talksport pundit.

2. This was our first game of the season, away from home against a side that we will be up against come the end of the season. We have a team that clearly isnt up to full speed or cohesion yet, against a team that has played together for pretty much the whole of last season and looks well gelled. I would prefer to go there and take a cautious approach and come away with a 'no defeats for the season' tally rather than going for a win and getting caught on the break and coming away with a defeat. I will take a win at home and draw away against ANY of the best 5 or 6 sides in the league'.

3. WHAT THE FUCK HAS IT GOT TO DO WITH 'ARRY'. LET HIM AND HIS FREAKSHOW STREAK OF PISS STRIKER WORRY ABOUT THEMSELVES RATHER THAN WHAT WE ARE DOING.

[Beeks]

I'm beginning to dislike the Twitchy twat as much as Taggart...the guy is obsessed with us...

[avoidconfusion]

I am hoping that Mancini played like this because he wanted to avoid a loss against Spurs on the first day of the new season at all costs.

In the end I still think he is lucky and has to personally thank Joe Hart for saving his balls but he got a point.

I also hope that he realized that he needs to play Ade (or Balotelli) and Johnson in the team and definitely needs to drop SWP.

[Ted Hughes]

I also hate Harry as much as Sir Bacon.

He was the one saying we're challenging for the title, now after one game with a disorganised half fit team, he's decided we're not. What's the betting he puts us in the frame again in a few weeks?

[the_georgian_genius]

I don't think we were negative at all.

Put it this way if you replaced one of Barry, De Jong or Toure with Adebayor, do you think it would of been 0-0? Also if Tevez, Silva and Johnson would of all been match fit and had that sharpness do you think it would of been 0-0?

[Nutzer]

I'm beginning to dislike the Twitchy twat as much as Taggart...the guy is obsessed with us...

Well they've gotta say summat to justify their pathetic existences. But the reason they're obsessed with us is because they know that when Bobby gets all his players match fit and understanding what each other is doing, we'll be unbeatable. And they're terrified at the prospect. Me? I can't wait.

[john@staustell]

I don't think we were negative at all.

Put it this way if you replaced one of Barry, De Jong or Toure with Adebayor, do you think it would of been 0-0? Also if Tevez, Silva and Johnson would of all been match fit and had that sharpness do you think it would of been 0-0?

Course not mate.

Dodgy failed to mention that they've just dropped 2 points at home against a load of blokes who've just met. And who they beat twice last season.

[the_georgian_genius]

I don't think we were negative at all.

Put it this way if you replaced one of Barry, De Jong or Toure with Adebayor, do you think it would of been 0-0? Also if Tevez, Silva and Johnson would of all been match fit and had that sharpness do you think it would of been 0-0?

Course not mate.

Dodgy failed to mention that they've just dropped 2 points at home against a load of blokes who've just met. And who they beat twice last season.

He took over spurs when they were bottom of the league with 2 points from 8 games dontcha know?

[ENIAM NAM]

Quite a balanced article regarding his comments:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog ... y-redknapp


Manchester City intend to transform the Premier League. The plan has not got very far yet but the reactions of rival managers are changing. Etiquette is the first casualty now that there is such interest in City. Following the 0-0 draw at White Hart Lane on Saturday, Harry Redknapp broke the conventions that call for discretion towards opponents. It is particularly risky to disparage a side that has left with a point since it raises doubts about your own squad.

On their way to the title last season, Chelsea lost at Tottenham Hotspur, meeting the same fate there as Arsenal and Liverpool. Redknapp's side were on the rise and ascended into the Champions League qualifiers that see them begin the tie with Young Boys in Bern tomorrow . On the domestic front, however, City are a disturbing complication for anyone, like Tottenham, with designs on consolidating among the elite. There was more than just wishful thinking in Redknapp's suggestion that City will end the campaign outside the top four.

He felt free to plunge into speculation about the challenge awaiting his opposite number. "Can he keep the players happy? It's difficult. He's not going to do it," the Tottenham manager said of Roberto Mancini. Redknapp could be vindicated but the readiness to address such issues and comment on the internal affairs of another club is at least a departure from managerial conventions.

Paradoxically, the interesting aspect to the first real sighting of Mancini's line-up was its dullness. It was as if the one shock he could spring lay in wilful monotony. After all the outlay and glamour of the transfers, he picked a midfield comprising three defensive players. Tottenham accepted the invitation to dominate and were, to some extent, thwarted by the outstanding Joe Hart. In that regard, though, City were flaunting the assets at their disposal.

Hart, a 23-year-old who has the opportunity to be England's goalkeeper for many seasons to come after being preferred against Hungary last week, was bought from Shrewbury for an initial £600,000 in the summer of 2006. Prudence has only a walk-on part in the melodrama of the club. The ownership of the highly contentious Thaksin Shinawatra and then Sheikh Mansour's Abu Dhabi United Group have had a certain return, with the club finishing in the top half of the table in each of the past three campaigns.

Those efforts did not exactly bring on a feeling of vertigo but City were in good enough condition for the experiment now being conducted with ever more vigour and expense. It can certainly be accused of crassness, but the scale of the outlay is more of a novelty than the project of buying the title. Blackburn Rovers wielded Jack Walker's means to become champions in 1995 but the prize came more than three years after the appointment of Kenny Dalglish and his work merited profound admiration. Signings such as Alan Shearer, Chris Sutton and Graeme Le Saux were eventually transferred at a large profit.

There will be no parallel in that regard at City and Sheikh Mansour will not anticipate a windfall from player sales, but Mancini, if he is to keep his job, has to emulate the exploits of Dalglish. Given the context, a prosaic opening to the programme at White Hart Lane will have been gratifying. No one left the ground denouncing City for frivolity or posturing.

Mancini is in a post where job security is at a minimum, but few people have such relevant experience for the Eastlands assignment. He is bound to know his way round the labyrinth after dealing with money, intrigue and pressure at Internazionale. It seems, too, that he is in luck since this is a period when so many of his peers are short of means and engaged in the reluctant effort to demonstrate that they are masters of the tight budget.

All sorts of hazards lie ahead for Mancini. It will be exacting for him to decide which players ought to go out on loan, to stay on reasonable terms with those picked irregularly and to coax consistent form out of the team. Even so, managers at other clubs will envy him options they no longer enjoy. City did not dazzle or even look effective on the ball at White Hart Lane, but there was nothing to ridicule either.

If improvement turns out to be unavoidable, even Redknapp will have to agree that City truly can destroy all our preconceptions about the Premier League hierarchy.

[The Man In Blue]

the dodgy bastard's bottled it already!

[Dameerto]

Why the fekk has no one (on Match of the Day or in the media) acknowledged that three of our starters had never played in the Prem before the Spurs game and that a number of our starters had only had a hand full of training sessions before the game? Who the fekk can make season-long predictions based on one game by us played under those circumstances? I would be far more damning of the seasoned battle-hardened Spurs team for not getting a result against us personally, particularly with Mancini's fekked up formation in the first half.

[Ted Hughes]

In actual fact, if SWP hadn't been such a dozy tw@ we could have won. Imagine the outcry then?

[The Man In Blue]

In actual fact, if SWP hadn't been such a dozy tw@ we could have won. Imagine the outcry then?

exactly what i've just been telling a spuds fan.

"you only fucking drew cos of hart" is a bullshit argument anyways, hart is part of the city team. they threw everything they had at us and it wasn't good enough. to beat a team that had been training together for two days.

[edge275]

A bit of early mind games from the twitcher.

Just let him talk his shite and don't rise to it.

[carl_feedthegoat]

In actual fact, if SWP hadn't been such a dozy tw@ we could have won. Imagine the outcry then?

exactly what i've just been telling a spuds fan.

"you only fucking drew cos of hart" is a bullshit argument anyways, hart is part of the city team. they threw everything they had at us and it wasn't good enough. to beat a team that had been training together for two days.

As I said before twato , that is the best Spuds can play whereas we can only get better and better.

Fuck Twitchy...he has done more U turns on his comments about us than I care to remember.

[trueblue64]

He seems to be after most of our players though.........


Tottenham made an enquiry to take Joleon Lescott on loan but were knocked back by Manchester City.
Harry Redknapp is keen to bolster his defence as fitness worries continue to surround the future of influential captain Ledley King, while Jonathan Woodgate is still plagued by a long-term groin problem and is unlikely to be named in the final 25-man squad.
Lescott appears to be out of favour after Roberto Mancini opted to start with Kolo Toure and Vincent Kompany at the heart of the City defence.
But despite having to contend with a place on the substitutes bench, Lescott was denied the chance to move down to London as City were not keen for him to join a Champions League rival.

[Grob]

I wish that fat red faced twat would leave us the fuck alone. Fucking wanker.

Sadly he does have a point, Mancini was right to be cautious but he set the team up incorrectly in my opinion and we could have avoided the hammering we took in the first half if we hadnt played 3 defensive midfielders sitting 5 yards infront of the defence and 2 yards away from each other.