Mancini pleads title race ignorance

MANCHESTER City boss Roberto Mancini admits he does not know where his side stand in the race for the Barclays Premier League title.

City bounced back from the home defeat to Everton with a 3-1 victory at Newcastle on Sunday which catapulted them into second place, two points behind Manchester United but having played two games more.

However, Mancini is refusing to look too far ahead as he attempts to repay the club’s staggering investment with silverware. Asked where the win at St James’ Park left his team in the title race, Mancini replied: “I don’t know.

“It has been a strange season because there isn’t at the moment one team which has 10 points more than anyone else. Every game is difficult for each team. We must continue to improve if it is possible. It is an important period and we want to always try to win. I'm happy because Carlos (Tevez) scored two goals. But we won this game only because all the players played very well, especially James Milner, who for me played a fantastic game.”

City return to Eastlands this afternoon when they host Aston Villa, hoping to reproduce their form on the road. They are unbeaten in the league away from home since the end of October but Mancini has challenged his players to replicate that form at home.

“I know that we must improve at home, this is very important. We were disappointed to lose to Everton and it was important that we had a victory at Newcastle, where it is difficult to win. The season is very long and we need to improve. We must continue to do this.”

Meanwhile, Aston Villa winger Marc Albrighton has called on his team-mates to pull together after admitting the club are in “a bit of a mess.” Villa slumped to a fourth defeat in five Barclays Premier League matches with Sunday night’s 2-1 loss against a Tottenham side that played for more than an hour with 10 men.

These are troubled times for Villa and boss Gerard Houllier, and it does not get any easier over the next few days with trips to Manchester City and Chelsea awaiting. With Villa 15th and just four points above the relegation zone, there lurks a very real prospect they could be in the bottom three come their next home game with Sunderland in eight days’ time.

“We have to look at it and think the table doesn’t lie. Against a lot of teams we’ve played well and created chances, but we’ve not tucked them away, and we’ve leaked goals at the back we probably shouldn’t have. That’s why we are down there. If you don’t win games then you are going to be down there, and we have to do something about that.

“It’s going to be tough to get out of it, but there’s nobody who can put that right other than the players. We just have to stick together as a group and hopefully we’ll pull something out of the bag. We’ve got ourselves in a bit of a mess, and we just need to pull

together to get ourselves out of it.

“We have to move on. It’s been a bad run, but there is nothing we can do about it now, we just have to look to the next game and hope to pick something up. The next two games are obviously massive, but then every game we play from now until the end of the season is going to be like that.”