User talk:Mancini's Sandbox/2009–10

The 2009–10 season is Manchester City Football Club's eighth consecutive season playing in the Premier League, the top division of English football, and its thirteenth season since the Premier League was first created with Manchester City as one of the its original 22 founding member clubs. Overall, it is the team's 118th season playing in a division of English football, most of which have been spent in the top flight. The club started the season under the management of Mark Hughes who was controversially sacked in mid-December after the team notched up seven consecutive draws in the Premier League. He was replaced by the Italian manager Roberto Mancini.

Season review
After only five months in the job at Eastlands, new manager Roberto Mancini demonstrated that he clearly deserved, and should get, more time to "mould the team to his own image." In his first few months in the job, after succeeding Mark Hughes in December, the Italian did make some noticeable improvements to the team, such as ironing out its occasional lack of focus and cohesion in defence whilst also improving the overall mentality of the team. Yet by the end of the season it had become obvious that there was much work still to be done in order to convince some of Mancini's higher-profile players to sign up to his personal ethos.

With a prolific 29 goals in his first season at the club, Carlos Tévez was widely regarded as the club's best and most important player this season, with the feisty Argentinian striker becoming an almost talismanic figurehead, not just for the team on the field of play and the fans in the stands, but also with regard to the whole zeitgeist associated with this new era in the club's history. Unfortunately for City, this campaign saw too many of his team mates failing to match his high work rate and fecund output. There were a number of players who flattered to deceive this season, with the most notable of them being the previous season's fan's favourite and top scorer, Robinho. The Brazilian's second season in English football proved to be a disastrous one for both the "marquee signing" and the Mark who signed him, with his January loan out to Brazilian club Santos for the remainder of the season only serving to emphasise the magnitude of his failure to deliver on the pitch anything remotely comparable to what he had already received in his bank account.

The loss in the team's last home game of the season to fellow rivals for landing one of the Premier League's "Top Four" elite slots, Tottenham Hotspur, in what had been dubbed by the media beforehand as the "Champions League play-off" game, was considered by many observers to be the Manchester club's defining moment of the season. Breaking the established stranglehold of the "Big Four" had been, and still is, one of the ambitions of the club's new wealthy owners, yet the players they expensively accumulated to achieve this feat failed to deliver, if only marginally so. However, one of the positives for City to be taken from this season's campaign will be that the club reached its first major semi-final since 1981 (albeit with the most expensive squad ever assembled to try to win the Carling Cup) before finally succumbing to the eventual trophy winners and bitter rivals from across the city, Manchester United. The City team also notched up some highly noteworthy victories over the other "Top Four" incumbents, Chelsea  and Arsenal.

In fact, Manchester City earned itself the distinction of being the only team to do the "league double" over the team that ultimately achieved the "league and cup double" this season. So as much as the season may have seemed like yet another false dawn to the ever-faithful and loyal City fans, the club is in reality "a work in progress"   that appears to still be on course to arrive where it ultimately wants to be,    and with more new signings in the close season, will presumably get even closer to achieving its very ambitious agenda next season. Given that the club is building its team from a much weaker base than Chelsea did under Roman Abramovich (viz. Chelsea had already finished fourth in the Premier League in the 2002–03 season before Abramovich purchased the club in June 2003) progress will naturally be somewhat slower despite the vast wealth of City's current ownership. So this season's campaign should still be considered to be a successful one for City, regardless of the fact that the team narrowly missed its main goal of qualifying for an opportunity to play in the Champions League in 2010–11.

Team kit
For this season the shirt sponsor for all of the club's kits was Etihad Airways which replaced the previous season's sponsor, Thomas Cook. There was also a change in the supplier of those kits for this season, with Nike owned Umbro replacing the previous season's supplier, Le Coq Sportif. As a result of the switch from its prior French kit supplier to the Greater Manchester-based Umbro, all of the club's previous season's team and goalkeeper kits were essentially replaced with new ones for this season. The overall sky blue color of the first team kit was retained but the style and trim if this strip was significantly changed. Completely new away and third team kits were introduced, while a new all green goalkeeper strip replaced the previous season's gold and black strip as the primary one for use by the stoppers, with a newly styled and trimmed variant of the old gold and black strip now becoming the secondary strip for use by the keepers in away fixtures.

The new all black away team kit came with gold vertical shoulder trim on the front that enabled the kit to be color coordinated with the gold and black goalkeeper strip, although it was sometimes also used with the all green goalkeeper strip. This gold and black color scheme was, according to its designer David Blanch, intended to be symbolic of the globe covered with bees (representing the world, to all parts of which the goods of the city are exported) that is featured on the city of Manchester coat of arms. That is because the Manchester City teams in the past have established the unique tradition of always wearing this crest on their shirts when playing at Wembley (or in a major cup final elsewhere) as a symbol of their pride in representing the city of Manchester at a major sporting event. In heraldic terms, the bee is symbolic of a hive of industry, and even today the Manchester bee is often used all by itself as a shorthand emblem for the city of Manchester.

The red and black diagonal sash across the white shirts of the new third team kit was intended as a nostalgic re-mastering of the original sashed strip worn by the City team back in the seventies, while that original design had, in its turn, been a nod back at the classic red and black striped shirts with black shorts that had originally been introduced by coach Malcolm Allison in imitation of A.C. Milan's strip, and which was frequently worn in its cup ties by the successful trophy-winning City team of the late sixties and early seventies.

Kit usage
Numbers denote: "number of home games : number of away or neutral venue games" X indicates potential home fixtures where away and third team kits are usually never used

Table information current as of the end of the season

Historical league performance
Prior to this season, the history of Manchester City's performance in the English football league hierarchy since the creation of the Premier League in 1992 is summarised by the following timeline chart – which commences with the last season (1991-92) of the old Football League First Division (from which the Premier League was formed).

Points breakdown
Points at home: 40 Points away from home: 27

Points against "Big Four" teams: 12 Points against promoted teams: 14


 * 6 points: Blackburn Rovers, Chelsea, Portsmouth, Wolverhampton Wanderers
 * 4 points: Arsenal, Aston Villa, Birmingham City, Bolton Wanderers, Burnley,
 * Fulham, Stoke City, Sunderland, West Ham United, Wigan Athletic
 * 2 points: Liverpool
 * 1 point: Hull City
 * 0 points: Everton, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur

Biggest &amp; smallest
Biggest home win: 5–1 vs. Birmingham City, 11 April 2010 Biggest home defeat: 0–2 vs. Everton, 24 March 2010 Biggest away win: 1–6 vs. Burnley, 3 April 2010 Biggest away defeat: 3–0 vs. Tottenham Hotspur, 16 December 2009 Biggest home attendance: 47,370 vs. Tottenham Hotspur, 5 May 2010 Smallest home attendance: 40,292 vs. Blackburn Rovers, 11 January 2010 Biggest away attendance: 75,066 vs. Manchester United, 20 September 2009 Smallest away attendance: 17,826 vs. Portsmouth, 30 August 2009

Second leg
Manchester United won 4–3 on aggregate.

Playing statistics
Appearances (Apps.) numbers are for appearances in competitive games only ''Apps. numbers denote:'' Total no. of games played (No. of games played as a substitute) Red card numbers denote: No. of second yellow cards / No. of straight red cards

Information current as of 9 May 2010 (end of season)

FA Cup
Information current as of 9 May 2010 (end of season)

Premier League Player of the Month award
Awarded monthly to the player that was chosen by a panel assembled by the Premier League's sponsor

PFA Fans' Player of the Month award
Awarded monthly to four players - one in each of the Premier League plus the three divisions of the Football League - those players being the ones that receive the most votes cast for that league in a poll conducted each month on the PFA's OWS (http://www.givemefootball.com)

LMA Performance of the Week award
Awarded on a weekly basis to the Premier League or Football League team that a five-man LMA adjudication panel deems to have performed in some outstanding manner

Etihad Player of the Month awards
Awarded to the player in each category that receives the most votes in a poll conducted each month on the MCFC OWS