mancityblues.com

Two ex-Manchester City players have come out today and said there is no “trust” at the club. Martin Petrov, now at Bolton Wanderers, was quoted as saying in the Bulgarian newspaper “Trud” that:

"The human relationships are lost and the trust is lost too. In this situation the players are going to play like millionaires in games and are not a team on the pitch. The team are looking for identity.”

Similarly, quoted in The Irish Examiner, former striker Benjani, now at Blackburn Rovers said:

“Sometimes you are loved to be there because of money, which is not good. I would prefer to be here without having all those facilities, be happy and trust everyone around you.”

Asked if he thought some players at City were interested in money more than anything else, Benjani said:

“Yes, it seemed like that and behind the scenes, there is no trust.
I would prefer to play for a club where you are being trusted and you trust everyone around you.”

Now it's easy to get annoyed and dismiss these comments as sour grapes from two players for whom things didn’t quite work out in the revolution at City in the last two years. And it is perfectly natural to want to snap back and say Petrov was injury prone and didn’t tackle and Benjani, well, shall we just say he just wasn’t very good?
But I think those factors are irrelevant here.
Whilst there is undoubtedly a large slice of bitterness there from each player, I think the fact that both of them are saying the same thing is worthy of consideration and maybe, looking at it another way, we can read between the lines and see that it could offer us a little insight into what has gone on behind the scenes at Manchester City in the last two years.

I mentioned the word ‘revolution’ above, but in fact, in many ways, what we have seen in that relatively short space of time are two revolutions. Mark Hughes came in and soon started to do things his own way. As part of that process he felt the need to make some unpopular decisions and move a few players on who he thought were resistant to his way of doing things. Elano, a crowd favourite at City was one case in point. As part of that process he brought in a fair few players of his own to replace the ones who were shown the door.
Similarly after Hughes’s dismissal, Roberto Mancini came in and started the whole process again in this transfer window, with Craig Bellamy and Stephen Ireland being two of the notable crowd favourites who seemingly weren’t towing the Mancini line.
Of course both managers were entitled to do this and saw it as essential to bringing success to the club their own individual way.

However, taking all this into account, the comments of Petrov and Benjani, which point to the lack of trust between the players, although probably said with a pinch of jealousy, actually start to make a lot of sense, in that it makes you realise that such a vast turnover of players, twice over, in such a short space of time, must make it very, very difficult for any manager to build some kind of team spirit, cohesion and trust between the players.

It puts it all into perspective. It isn’t anybody’s fault it’s just the nature of things when you are trying to fast track a sleeping giant of football to major success again in a short space of time.
And furthermore, it highlights that what City need just as much as money right now is some stability and patience so the players can develop relationships and trust with one another.

I'm sure we will get there eventually.

(But that probably means people like me might have to get off the current manager’s back and let him get on with the job!)