Mancini churlish to turn on Mario

Roberto Mancini spent most of last week in a foul mood and Mario Balotelli took the brunt of it.

Mancini bawled him out in training during the week, announced that “nobody can trust Mario’’, claimed he wanted to substitute him after five minutes of the Sunderland match, and later said that if Sergio Aguero had been playing instead of Balotelli, City would certainly have won.

This is all rather reminiscent of Jose Mourinho’s attitude to Balotelli when he was washing his hands of him at Inter.