Is Roberto Mancini Cracking Up?

It seems Roberto Mancini is struggling to cope over at the Etihad.

The Man City manager is under increasing pressure having gone out of Europe after failing to pick up a single win, seeing Man City struggle with poor form domestically and having to deal with dissent amongst the ranks.

On Sunday he saw his side fall 6 points behind Manchester United and surrender an almost 2 year old unbeaten home record after Manchester United rolled up to the Etihad and defeated his side 3-2.

Following the game, Mancini adressed a function back in Italy where he told the guests,

“United have more experience but we have a much better team and play much better football.”

Nothing extraordinary about this, managers frequently try to gee up their players, and I assume it would have been especially important for him to do so after such a demoralising defeat. The one problem I do have with this statement is that it directly contradicts his comments on the two sides just over 48 hours before.

Speaking ahead of the derby on Friday, Mancini said:

“They are better than us at this moment.

“We have only been here for two years. They are used to playing these games in the title race for 20 years. They have won everything for 15 years.

“You can’t change this in two or three years. You need more time.

“For this reason they have a small advantage.”

It’s always been said winning a title is much easier than retaining it and at the moment it looks like the pressure is getting to Robert because there is no plausible reason a person should flip flop like that (apart from Mitt Romney of course).

There may be another explanation though, perhaps Friday was simple a case of rubbish mind games that backfired? I think Bobby should leave this sort of thing to the master!