Mancini predicts big fight ahead

ROBERTO MANCINI has warned his Manchester City players that they face “a fight” right until the end of the season from neighbours Manchester United for the Premier League title.

United briefly replaced big-spending City at the top of the table after a 2-0 win over QPR yesterday before Roberto Mancini’s side returned to the summit following the 1-0 defeat of Arsenal later in the day.

David Silva’s winner — City’s 50th Premier League goal of the season — restored City’s two-point advantage and left Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger declaring his team’s title chances had all but vanished.

But ahead of a busy festive programme, Mancini has told his players to prepare for a battle to the end of the season from United, the reigning champions.

“We can’t think that we can win the title without a fight from United. It’s impossible,” said the City manager.

“We want to stay top for a long time — not only for Christmas.’’

City, who entertain Stoke on Wednesday, produced the perfect response against Arsenal after their unbeaten league start was ended by Chelsea last Monday.

Pablo Zabaleta hit the woodwork but Silva’s fifth league goal ensured it was business as usual at the Etihad Stadium.

“We are delighted because after losing to Chelsea it was really important to beat Arsenal,” added Mancini.

“We deserved to win the game.”

Mancini added: “We didn’t deserve to lose to Chelsea but that is football.

“It was a great game, not for the managers, but for the supporters. We deserved to beat Arsenal, we had a fantastic performance as Arsenal are playing very well.

“When you play against Arsenal they have players like Gervinho, [Theo] Walcott and [Robin] van Persie who can score at any moment.

“We wanted to win this game, we wanted to go top and we know the season is long. If we work hard, we can stay up there.

“For our character this was a big test and we showed we are a strong team. Afterwards I said we should have had more control of the game after the first goal, but they were attack, attack, attack.”

Arsenal were left frustrated by a brilliant display from City’s goalkeeper Joe Hart. The England international produced a string of brilliant saves to frustrate Robin van Persie, Thomas Vermaelen and Theo Walcott.

But the result leaves Wenger’s side 12 points adrift of the summit and the Frenchman conceded that it will be difficult to win the title now.

“It will be difficult to close the gap on City now, but we will try,” said Wenger, who lost defender Johan Djourou to a groin injury which could sideline the player for three weeks.

“This was a game we couldn’t afford to lose. It’s difficult to take but we will continue to fight.

“Losing Johan didn’t help. We are short on the flanks and every injury at the back is detrimental to our performance.

“[Laurent] Koscielny, Djourou and Vermaelen did remarkably well but they are centre-backs. Our belief has to be intact because we are frustrated for the players.

“But it is a good basis to build from. Both teams played positively and that’s why the game was interesting. It was also intense physically.”