Mancini calls for calm after shock defeat

Manchester City boss Roberto Mancini called for focus from his side after defeat at Swansea saw them lose top spot in the Premier League.

Luke Moore’s late header condemned City to a 1-0 defeat at Liberty Stadium, leaving Mancini’s side one point behind arch rivals Manchester United, who won 2-0 against West Brom.

In the wake to the shock defeat, Mancini has challenged his side to finish the season strongly as they chase their first league title in 44 years.

“Sometimes we score a lot of goals, today we didn’t score so in the last two months it is important that we start to score, the season has just 10 games,” Mancini told Sky Sports.

“In this moment it is a tough moment but now we have 10 games to win the trophy.”

“I think that they played very well for the first 15 minutes, we had good possession in the last 10 minutes of the first half and the second half.”

“We had control of the game, we had some chances where we should have scored but we didn’t score and then made a mistake at the last when we conceded their goal.”

City were overrun in midfield as Swansea imposed their possession-based game effectively.

In an attempt to reverse this, Mancini replaced the ineffective Gareth Barry with Sergio Aguero in the first half.

“We had a lot of good possession and we needed another striker,” he said.

“We had control and we had chances, we needed to score. We couldn’t score like against Sporting and then we had our mistake.”

“I don’t think we deserved another result (like the midweek Europa League defeat to Sporting defeat) but now we can do nothing.”

Swansea boss Brendan Rodgers praised his side’s positivity as they maintained their impressive home record this season.

Rodgers told Sky Sports: “The thing is we retained our positivity and overall as I say we scored one and created other chances and when we had to defend we defended well.”

“We respect every opponent we play, none more so than Manchester City. They’ve gone away to Tottenham and Manchester United and have had great victories so we knew coming here today this was going to be an incredibly tough game for us because of the level.”

“Really the focus is very much on our own game because we feel if we can pass the ball and have the courage to play.”

“Like I say we’ve hurt teams and that’s something that’s been proved over the last couple of season that we’ve been able to do that.”

“Even against the best teams we believe that can cause problems so today was a great victory and a terrific goal to win the game.”