Italian lays blame firmly at feet of his squad for inability to defend their title.
Manchester City head coach Roberto Mancini says that his under-performing players must all take responsibility for the mistakes that they have made this season in their failed defence of the Premier League tile which they won last year, reports the Daily Mail.
The Italian was speaking ahead of the top-flight champions’ trip to Villa Park to take on relegation-threatened Aston Villa on Monday night in front of the live TV cameras, with his side now trailing runaway leaders and arch-rivals Manchester United by a massive 15 points with just 11 matches of the campaign left to play.
“I don’t like players that never think it’s their fault. These players can’t play with me,” said Mancini in the Mail.
“Sometimes it’s important that one player takes his responsibility because when you are a top player you earn a lot of money and you should always play at 100 per cent.
“I want strong players that are upset with me when they don’t play but after that show me they deserve to play.
“For this reason we’ve said that it was important to put another two or three top players in the team.”
Meanwhile, the City coach also admitted that it will now be extremely hard to catch Sir Alex Ferguson’s side at the top of the table: “It’s difficult to win a championship here. We won last year but we won very quickly. Usually when you manage a team that hasn’t won for 40 years, I think that you need four, five or six years to win a Premier League.
“We won the championship after two years and it’s clear it’s more difficult the year after but we had the chance.”
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