Hughes unmoved after Cahill downs City

Mark Hughes, the Manchester City manager, refused to panic despite his team slumping to their fifth home league defeat of the season in a 1-0 loss to Everton.

Australia midfielder Tim Cahill's goal in the first minute of stoppage-time was sufficient to give the injury-plagued Merseyside club a memorable win at Eastlands here Saturday and leave City struggling at the wrong end of the table, just above the relegation places.

But Hughes refused to be too downhearted even though his team have scored just one goal in the last four games and are struggling to match the expectation and excitement generated when they were taken over by new billionaire owners from Abu Dhabi early in the season.

“I don't think we have moved,” said former Manchester United striker Hughes of his team's league position. “Nothing has really changed although we would ideally have liked three points from this game.

“We have games coming up when we need to start putting points on the board and we need to show more personality and understanding of key times in games to make sure we take something out of games,” Hughes, previously the manager of Blackburn Rovers and before that Wales, added.

“We should never have lost this but we have the Christmas period coming up and we can't afford to dwell too much on this.”

City's main problem lies in the goalscoring department, with their attacking and enterprising approach play all too often resulting in no end product.

Hughes is widely reported to have several millions at his disposal in the January transfer window and, although not prepared to go into specifics, the City manager agrees his team need to improve in that area above all others.

“We played a lot of football in and around their box. But we need that physical threat, that desire to get on the end of things when the ball is flashing around the six-yard box.

“You need to get across defenders, mess people around and at the moment we're lacking that,” added Hughes, renowned in his playing days for giving opposition back-fours a torrid time.

Victory was a fine achievement for Everton and their manager David Moyes who was forced to go into the contest without a recognised striker, with Cahill playing as a lone front man.

Unlike Hughes, Moyes has no money to spend in next month's transfer window, but he still believes Everton can enjoy a productive second half to the season as long as they take their impressive away form back to Goodison Park.

“If I knew why our away form is better than our home form, I'd do something about it,” said Moyes.

“We've been a little bit unfortunate at home but, in saying that, we keep winning away from home and that gives us a chance, if we put it right at Goodison, to have a good season.

“Counter-attacking football has become a big thing in the Premier League.

“Maybe the expectations of home crowds have been built up and become too big – fans at Everton and Man City, for example, are expecting greater things and our fans today were more patient with the way we were playing than they would have been if we had been at home,” the Scot added.

Moyes was pleased by the way Everton rebounded from last weekend's loss to Aston Villa, when they equalised in stoppage time only then to concede the winning goal.

“It would have been very easy for us to be down on ourselves. It's harder to get out there and roll your sleeves up and the players deserve an awful lot of credit for that.”