Mancini moans but fortune still smiles on Italian
More passion?
Better passing?
More clinical finishing?
The answers could go on and on and on.
What answer you would not hear is the answer proffered by City manager Roberto Mancini who claims, despite having 39 players in his squad list this term, that his workforce is still too thin on the ground.
Mancini sounded hard done by following his side’s abject victory over Wigan Athletic at Eastlands on Saturday afternoon, a win they squeezed out despite being outplayed by Roberto Martinez’s men.
City only won because Wigan goalkeeper Ali Al Habsi committed a howler when he let David Silva’s tame 38th-minute shot slip out of his hands and between his legs.
City have played 45 games already this term – just three short of the number they played in the entirety of last season – and Mancini points to that stat as the reason why they were off the boil against their lowly opponents.
He said: “I think that the only problem we have is we’re playing every three days and have a few players injured. If we recover all the players we won’t have a problem in the future.
“I think that this year we have been very unlucky.
“I don’t know how many injuries, but hamstring injuries that take two weeks to recover, ankle, knee problems, all these problems it’s incredible this year. I think we need to have other players next year.
“If the players can’t work in training during the week because we don’t have the time, it’s difficult for them to always play at 100%. If I have all the players, I can change four or five and the players who don’t play one game can work in the days we have between games.”
City are of course without Kolo Toure at the moment after he failed a drugs test and Mancini admitted his absence has affected the balance – and mental stability – of his squad.
He added: “It’s a bad moment for him. I think he doesn’t deserve to have this moment because he is a good man, a good player. For the team, it’s a very difficult moment because Kolo is an important player with a lot of experience.”
Apart from Silva’s poor strike that should never have ended in a goal, City produced very little in the first half and were not that much better after the break.
Carlos Tevez was as effervescent as usual but had little real impact as Wigan’s defence looked unusually coherent and consistent.
Al-Habsi’s error was unusual because he has been Wigan’s more reliable performer this season but it confirmed the nagging notion that sides at the bottom get not an ounce of luck.
They were just as unlucky at the business end of the pitch as they emerged by far the brighter and more enthusiastic side but goals would not arrive and it is goals that win games and, crucially, keep sides in the Premier League.
James McCarthy, Hugo Rodallega and Conor Sammon all missed glorious late chances to grab at least a point and that was the least Wigan deserved.
Yet despite leaving Eastlands with nothing, Martinez correctly saw enough in the performance to give him hope that there is still time for Wigan to move away from the bottom of the table.
He said: “Sometimes with performances like today you don’t get the points straight away, you get the points long-term. I’m certainly proud of the performance from the players.
“The performance was really, really good. More than anything you know that coming here Manchester City are going to put you under massive pressure, but I felt we coped with their threat really well, especially in the second half.
“We controlled the tempo of the whole game and that is most pleasing aspect. We had more corners, more possession, more attempts and better chances than the home side and in that respect were the better side but at the end we didn’t get anything out of the performance apart from a huge belief.
“The players deserve a lot of credit for the manner in which they perform and if we carry on with those standards for the rest of the season we will get the points we need to survive.”
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