18th February, 2013
Manchester City boss Roberto Mancini has blasted sack talk, claiming he’s the best manager in the country.
The Italian launched his attack after their FA Cup win over Leeds United at the weekend.
Mancini seethed: “Someone said for six months that Manchester City would change their manager and Guardiola would come in.
“After Guardiola went to Bayern Munich another manager is being linked. They don’t have a very good memory, because in the last 15 months I’m the best manager in England because I’ve one Premier League, one FA Cup and one Charity Shield.
“There is not another manager like me and I understand I can do nothing about the rumours but this is the reality.”
Meanwhile, Mancini believes there is life in the Premier League title race if his City strikers can fire as they did in Sunday’s FA Cup cruise over Leeds.
City rarely had to leave second gear to beat their lacklustre Championship opponents 4-0, with Sergio Aguero’s double complemented by goals from Yaya Toure and Carlos Tevez.
He said: “I hope Sergio will be like this from now until the end, because if Sergio is like this, and our strikers continue to score a lot of goals from now until the end, I think the championship is not finished.”
A walk in the park against a Leeds side was just the tonic City needed after their Southampton horror show last week. A 3-1 defeat left them 12 points behind Manchester United in their bid to retain their title and many consider it to be a foregone conclusion that the trophy will be back at Old Trafford come May.
But after watching Aguero score twice to take his tally of goals in a stop-start season to 13, the Italian added: “This is possible but I think it should be confident, always. If we are 12 points behind – we lost seven points in three games. This can happen for every team. We play a lot of games.”