City Have Turned Into My High School Band Program

I know what you are thinking. "What the hell is Bela thinking?" Well, looking at the recent results from the clubs tour of Asia, it seems that they are using a tactic that we used to use when everyone in the band got angry over a decision from the director. We would essentially suck. We got knocked out of preliminary competition from time to time because of something that had happened either at the football game the night before or the morning of at practice. And Manchester City seem to be doing the same thing.

The club have lost their last two games in their Asian tour, including a loss against a Thai All Star team this past Saturday. Why are they loosing? It is likely that it has to deal with the departure of coach Sven-Goran Erkisson. City owner, Thasking Shinawatra, has all but kicked the former English gaffer out the door over his performance at the club this year. So, in retaliation, the club is playing down. Sounds a lot like what my band did in high school, right? But there is one small difference between us and them. We did this for free and there was never a fear that we would get kicked out of the program for not doing our part. This is not the case for City who ended up ninth in the league this year and who received a spot in the UEFA Cup for next season. There is also speculation that Thaskin will sell the entire first team squad this year. Of course Thaskin has denied these rumors but it is likely that he will sell the club by this time next year if they do not do well in the league.

So what? Ericksson gets canned. He will not be the first manager to be fired after a season. Thaskin will sell the club. This is certainly will not be the first time this has happened. The problem here is that you have more foreign owners in the Premier League these days and most of them do not really understand how to manage the clubs and how much slack to give the gaffer. A clear example of this is the situation earlier this year with Liverpool. The American owners wanted to sack Benitiez. Then when the club did not do that well, one of the owners wanted to sell his part of the club off. This leaves these clubs in upheaval year after year and the clubs will fall further down the rungs of the league ladder. Granted, you will never see anything like the situation at Man City occur at Chelsea or Manchester United or Arsenal for that matter. But for the smaller clubs, a mere mention of relegation and the owner starts to fire off about how things will change and people will be sacked and conversely, the team will start to play down due to their faith to their gaffer. It is a rather ugly cycle that makes the beautiful game far less beautiful.