Mancini looks ahead to ´vital´ January

Manchester City boss Roberto Mancini was pleased his side returned to the winners list on Tuesday.

The league leaders were comfortable 3-0 winners over Liverpool at the City of Manchester Stadium, with goals from Sergio Aguero, Yaya Toure and a James Milner penalty securing the three points.

It came just two days after City were surprise 1-0 losers at Sunderland and Mancini was still smarting about the loss, despite the win over Liverpool.

“Football is crazy, sometimes you lose incredible games (Sunderland),” Mancini said.

“I think we deserved to win that game (Sunderland) 3-0. But I was disappointed because that a team like us should understand that sometimes to win you can’t concede two or three counter attacks in the last few minutes.”

“All of the players played very well and they fought for every ball against Sunderland, but we were really unlucky in that game.”

When Mancini’s focus turned to the Liverpool win, he was happy with the first-half effort.

“Tonight we had some trouble in the second half, but we did a good performance,” he said.

“I think in the first half we played well, and in the second half for 20 minutes we might have been tired. But also Liverpool are a fantastic team and a strong team.”

“They pushed in the first 20 minutes in the second half but we deserved to win this game.”

Mancini admitted that he regretted waving an imaginary card at the referee after Martin Skrtel brought down Yaya Toure in the penalty area – leading to Milner’s goal – and thinks January will be his side’s most testing month with Yaya Toure on international duty at the African Nations Cup with the Ivory Coast.

“We will lose Yaya after Sunday’s game against United. For this reason, January is a very important month. If we can stay on top after January, then we have a good chance,” Mancini said.

“I (will) try to find another Yaya in the squad but there is not another Yaya. For us, he is a very important player.”

Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish did not feel his side should have won but bemoaned their failure to convert their chances.

“I’m not sure the score line reflects the way the game went,” Dalglish said.

“I’m not saying we deserved to win, but I think the lesson we’ve learned from tonight is that if we are not clinical we are going to suffer.”

“There are a lot of things that happened tonight that we can correct so we need to go and do that. It is a harsh lesson, but it will be even harsher if we don’t learn from it.”