Manchester City united by presence of uplifting Pellegrini

Players formerly at club's margins such as Samir Nasri finding their place under placid Chilean as is evident in their securing the English League Cup.

Vincent Kompany, top left, and Pablo Zabaleta, top right, celebrate Samir Nasri's goal for Manchester City in the League Cup final against Sunderland on March 2, 2014. Jamie McDonald / Getty Images

Managerial violence has been in the news this weekend, so it is worth remembering that, this time a year ago, a typically outspoken Roberto Mancini said he wanted to punch Samir Nasri.

Mancini being Mancini, there may have been an element of exaggeration involved. Regardless, it hard to imagine Manuel Pellegrini punching anyone, much less head-butting them, Alan Pardew-style.

Pellegrini favours the gentler approach; the arm around the shoulder, the private chat. A noisy dictator was replaced by a quiet conciliator. It is a manner that Nasri, one of the more sensitive souls in the Manchester City dressing room, prefers, so it was apt that the Frenchman helped deliver the first trophy of the Chilean’s reign.

Pellegrini’s lack of silverware in Europe had been an issue. Jose Mourinho branded Nasri’s mentor Arsene Wenger, another to endure a long drought, “a specialist in failure”. It is harder to say the same about the South American now.

Nasri’s magnificent strike capped a two-minute turnaround, a quick-fire double that City hope will lead to a domestic-trophy treble.

“We want to win everything,” he said.

Nasri is emblematic of the new era, a flair player attacking with freedom, a footballer alienated by Mancini’s policy of tough love and stimulated by Pellegrini’s softer touch and progressive style of play.

One of last season’s great underachievers ranks among the current campaign’s greatest achievers. It is a sign that City’s camp is happier. Their last trip to Wembley Stadium was Mancini’s anti-climactic finale.

A second successive defeat to underdogs was feasible after Fabio Borini’s smartly taken opener. This, it appeared, was the new “typical City”, the way a club with a pratfall-prone past could stumble and tumble when it seemed simpler to win and grin.

The phrase has another meaning for Pellegrini’s City. Delivering goals in great quantity and of great quality? That is the new “typical City”. Salvation lay in their ability to score spectacularly.

Yaya Toure’s powered, curled chip and Nasri’s vicious drive inserted their names into City folklore and into the pantheon of scorers of glorious goals at Wembley.

Toure’s equaliser, struck with the slightest of backlifts, was remarkable. His presence on the scoresheet was not. A 17th goal of the season follows Wembley winners in the 2011 FA Cup semi-final and final.

Pellegrini has encouraged him to attack more, but the regime change has benefited others rather more. The laid-back Toure was content under Mancini’s stewardship.

Nasri was not and, when a year of poor form was followed by Pellegrini’s decision to sign World Cup winner Jesus Navas, his troubles were mushrooming.

Yet Pellegrini pledged that his tenure would be a meritocracy and, while Navas emerged from the bench to score the late third goal, Nasri was the deserving starter.

He has cemented his place in the strongest side. Others have not, but intelligent man-management entailed taking a risk when there was a trophy at stake. Goalkeeper Costel Pantilimon, who had been told he would play in last year’s FA Cup final before Mancini performed a late U-turn, made his belated Wembley debut. Edin Dzeko, so often the substitute for the biggest games, was granted a start.

Dzeko, the mercurial Bosnian, was dismal, but he has represented a pet project. Placating the unsettled was Pellegrini's first aim. Now the objectives are higher, the tasks harder. City may be favourites to win the FA Cup, but they are not in the Premier League. The Uefa Champions League dream has almost died.

They have a weak link, just as the manager has a blind spot. Pellegrini’s long-term ally, Martin Demichelis, continues to look like a liability. Sunderland targeted him.

The odd element about it is that Demichelis does not even suit Pellegrini’s style of football. The combination of a high defensive line and a slow centre-back tends to equal trouble. So it proved until City echoed their past by providing a moment of brilliance.

They last won the League Cup in 1976, when Dennis Tueart struck with an overhead kick. Thirty-eight years on, Toure’s virtuoso strike left Sunderland’s Gus Poyet jokingly suggesting the only way to halt the Ivorian would have been to shoot him.

It would have been an extreme action, even by the standards of managers of the north-east clubs.

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