VMC's Some Might Say: Sucker Punched

On the road and injury hit City have slipped to 7 points behind The Stretfords with resurgent Chelsea charging up on the rails. Post match reaction to a chastening defeat on Wearside...

Roberto Mancini:

'You need to ask the referee why the goal was given, not me, I was there and I saw that it was a big foul. It's impossible that two men couldn't see it. Maybe the referee ate too much for Christmas. Maybe Zabaleta deserved a red card.'

'It was the same game as last season, like the season before and the season before that. Maybe next year we won't come, we won't spend the money to come here but every time we've come here and lost we've won a title at the end of the season. I don't know how it's possible to lose this game, I think we played very well but we have one problem. We need to score. Our strikers need to improve. We need to change something in our team because we cannot continue like this. We score too few goals.

'United concede a lot of goals but they score a lot so they have a chance but we can recover points.'

Martin O'Neill:

'Considering the opposition, I would have to say that was our best performance of the season. We took a bit of confidence from winning at Southampton, which we took into this game. There are times when you have to play without the ball and there are times when you need to defend stoutly - we did both of them.

'Im genuinely not bothered about what Mancini says. I have seen it before with other managers. I thought we were terrific. We had the more presentable chances. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. Manchester City are a terrific team. I'm told this is the first time that City haven't won when Tevez and Aguero have started together. So it was a great effort by us.'

Joe Hart:

'We've had leads, United have had the lead — it's to-ing and fro-ing at the moment. We are a team of winners, it's hard and it hurts but we've got to move on. It is hard to lead and it is hard to chase. We've clawed points back before — we proved it at the end of last season. We've just got to believe.'


CITY ON TWATTER:

Vincent Kompany:
'Our travelling fans were great, thanks - Really unlucky with the decisions today but that's football - Congrats Mignolet, great performance.'

Sergio Aguero:
'Our game wasn't great but we didn't deserve to lose. We have to keep working to get to top condition and recover the goal.'

UPCOMING FIXTURES:
all times East Manchester

Sa 29Dec 15h00 Norwich, Carrow Road, PL
Tu 01Jan 15h00 Stoke, The Etihad, PL
Sa 05 Jan 15h00 Watford, The Etihad, FAC
Su 13Jan 16h00 Arsenal, The Emirates, PL
Sa 19Jan 15h00 Fulham, The Etihad, PL
Tu 29Jan 19h45 QPR, Loftus Road

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