It is my fault Manchester City lost Europa League clash against Sporting Lisbon, admits Roberto Mancini
Roberto Mancini claimed his mistake in underestimating Sporting Lisbon led to Manchester City’s Europa League exit at the hands of the Portuguese outfit.
Despite fighting from 2-0 down on the night to seal a 3-2 second-leg victory against Ricardo Sa Pinto’s team, City were eliminated at the last 16 stage on away goals following a 1-0 defeat in Lisbon last week.
And having insisted a 1-0 Premier League defeat at Everton in January was due to his mistakes, Mancini accepted the blame once again as City were left with only the league title to play following Sporting’s surprise aggregate success.
"I'm proud of the performance, but disappointed that we didn’t deserve to go through." Mancini said. "I am the manager. It is not the player’s fault, it is my fault. I made a mistake, for this reason I am sorry.
"I made a mistake in the first game. After beating Porto in the last round, we maybe thought Sporting would be easy, but in football it is never easy. Football, every game is difficult, especially in Champions League and Europa League, because every team tries to win. Some games, we can make a mistake.
"The manager is always the person who prepares the game and maybe I made some mistakes."
The silver lining for City could be the avoidance of a draining commitment to the competition with title rivals Manchester United no longer burdened by involvement in the Europa League.
And Mancini joked: "We were envious of United because they lost and we wanted to lose this game!
"But really, it will now be a good fight until the end of the season because we have only the Premier League to focus on.
"We can put all of our strength into this and I think that will be good. We were top for seven months and now are one point behind, so we can still win the league.
"We have four important players missing and that is not good, but if we have the same spirit as in second half tonight, we can win the game against Chelsea next week."
City goalkeeper Joe Hart admitted he believed had had won the game with an injury-time header from Nigel de Jong’s cross.
Hart said: "I thought it was in. It didn’t need to get to that but football is football. It is drama, and for the fans it was fantastic in the second half, but we didn’t show up in the first half. I hope we can take some positivity out of the second half."
Manchester City are reportedly eyeing 29-year-old Ivory Coast defensive midfielder Jean-Jacques Gosso, who currently plays for Turkish club Orduspor.
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Roberto Mancini wants to win the title for the fan caught on camera looking like he was crying after the Blues’ defeat at Swansea.
But the City boss has warned the supporters – and his players – that now is not the time for any show of grief.
“We were very disappointed for our supporters after Swansea because I saw on the TV one of our supporters crying,” said Mancini, ahead of tonight’s Europa League tie with Sporting Lisbon.
“For this guy, and all the supporters, we want to change things.”
The defeat at Swansea, three days after they lost the first leg of their Europa League tie in Portugal puts the Blues a point behind rivals United with 10 games to play.
But Mancini says it now needs stout hearts to turn the situation around again.
“We lost both games but we can’t cry,” he said. “Now is the time to be strong and keep going because we’re a top team and we have time to recover. We can’t cry because we’re one point behind United
http://menmedia.co.uk/manchesterevening ... crying-fan
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