No fear of sack for Mancini after City slump

Roberto Mancini claimed he does not fear the sack at Manchester City after experiencing a second successive defeat.

But Mancini admitted City can forget about lifting the Premier League title if they are to lose more games against the lesser teams, following a bitterly disappointing 2-1 defeat at Wolverhampton Wanderers.

The Italian is under increasing pressure at Eastlands after this setback came in the same week three of his players were caught on video drinking alcohol at a party in Scotland.

And he was fielding questions about his job security again as City continue to stumble in their bid to look like authentic title contenders.

“I do not feel the pressure, I am not worried about that [the sack]. But of course we have to win these games, because we are a very good team,” Mancini said.

“But we have to play all the games at 115 percent, not 15 percent. We played only in the first 20 minutes. We played very well and only scored one goal, even though we had other chances.

“We have a good team spirit because we started the season very well. We lost against Arsenal because we played with one player less.

“We had fantastic spirit there but today we didn’t play very well. We missed Carlo [Tevez] and Nigel [de Jong] but we have the players to beat any team. We must understand why we lost.”

Emmanuel Adebayor?s penalty gave the visitors the lead but Nenad Milijas rewarded Wolves?s pressure with a fiercely struck equaliser.

City fell behind early in the second period when David Edwards beat Joe Hart from close range and despite a late bombardment in search of an equaliser, Mick McCarthy was celebrating his first win in six attempts against his opponents.

Mario Balotelli, the Italy international, was virtually anonymous on his first Premier League start since his 24 million pound move from Inter Milan while Adebayor reacted petulantly when he was substituted late in the game.

“I took him off because I wanted to try something. But Manu played very well. He wasn’t happy but that is normal. We have another game on Thursday,” Mancini said.

McCarthy insisted this victory – Wolves’s first in the Premier League since the opening day – was a triumph for team spirit.

Wolves remain in the bottom three of the Premier League and face Manchester United (away) and Arsenal (home) in their next two games.

“Without team spirit we’d really be struggling. This was fully deserved. When we get beaten and we’re propping the league up and I’m saying we’re playing well and the team spirit is good, it sounds awful when you’re down there,” he said.

“But that performance and result just shows what the lads are all about. I think that result has been coming and it wasn’t a rabbit out of the hat, we’ve been playing well.”