Roberto Mancini’s bizarre training methods at Manchester City revealed as players made to practise against ‘ghosts’
Shay Given also says the Italian 'was very argumentative - I think that is what cost him his job'
ROBERTO MANCINI'S off-the-wall training methods at Manchester City have been revealed by former keeper Shay Given.
The Republic of Ireland stopper recalls a “weird” spell under Mancini who, to his credit, did land City the Premier League title in 2011-12.
Italian Mancini arrived at the Etihad in December 2009 and also engineered an FA Cup win during his time in England.
Given says that Mancini, now in charge of Russian outfit Zenit, was a difficult personality to work for.
His argumentative attitude tended to undermine all of the positive work being done at the club.
Given told Off The Ball the players were baffled by a penchant for working against ‘ghosts’ in training.
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“You couldn’t make it up,” he said.
“His very first training session he got the ball and threw it to me and I had to pass it to the full-back, back to me, back to the other side.
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“Then we would go through the lines of the pitch and Carlos Tevez or whoever goes in and finishes it into an empty net, there’s not even an opposition goalkeeper.
"Then we would do it again.
“It was all a bit weird. I don’t even know from a coaching point of view what the benefit was from that. There weren’t even mannequins, you were playing nobody!
“We were brilliant against nobody on a Thursday and it got a bit more complicated when there were some players against us on a Saturday.”
Given gave another insight into Mancini's mentality - and his own theory why the Italian was eventually sacked.
“It was weird because he used to come in on his bike every morning," he explained.
"The physio would give him a report – who’s training and who is not training. You would just see him go into one, fighting and rowing and cursing.
“The guy is obviously a professional physiotherapist who has studied all of these different things and he’s telling him: “You’re wrong.” It was weird.
“If you’re a manager at any level, you want to get the best out of people and I don’t understand why shouting at people and putting them down all of the time gets the best out of people.
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“He was very argumentative with everyone, not just myself, and in the end, I think that is what cost him his job at Man City.
"I don’t think there was anybody else in the building speaking to him by the time he left."
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