City boss holds inquest over Wolves defeat

ROBERTO Mancini will tolerate no repeat of Manchester City’s performance at Wolves as he spelt out his frustration at falling eight points behind Barclays Premier League pacesetters Chelsea.

Mancini was due to hold an inquest yesterday with his players into the shock 2–1 defeat against second from bottom Wolves at Molineux.

He described it as “the worst game we have played” as Wolves hit back with goals from Nenad Milijas and David Edwards after Emmanuel Adebayor’s penalty.

Mancini said: “We must find a solution because I am very disappointed. For me, we played really badly.

“To suffer two defeats in a week is unthinkable.

“To go eight points behind Chelsea, that is frustrating — and I am very frustrated.

“We beat them and just over one week ago we were only two points behind them.

“Last week we played fantastic football with 10 men against Arsenal for nearly 90 minutes.

“This time I am sorry for our supporters.

“We played very well for 15 minutes when we had four or five chances to score and then we played badly for the rest of the time.”

Mancini added: “I don’t know why we stopped playing, but that is not good enough. I will speak to the players to find out why.

“We must know where that performance came from and we must start again because the season is very long.

“Maybe because we played well for the first 15 minutes, we thought it was an easy game.

“Such a thing doesn’t exist in football.”

City striker Mario Balotelli showed glimpses of his potential after an injury–hit start to the campaign following his £24million move from Inter Milan.

But Mancini admits he is still coming to terms with the demands of the Premier League.

He said: “He must get to know the Premier League because it is different from Serie ‘A’.

“He did good things. He needs time but he is a good player.”

Edwards’ first goal for 14 months came at the expense of his former Shrewsbury team and house mate Joe Hart.

He said: “We are very good friends and, when I bought my first house, we were both at Shrewsbury together and he rented a room off me, for peanuts at the time.

“He owes me no rent and he has bought me a couple of drinks since then so it’s okay!

“I said to him, I thought he did well, that he couldn’t do anything about the two goals, but he was obviously disappointed about the result.

“But he was kind of happy in a way if anyone was going to score the winner, that it was me.

“We haven’t been getting results recently, but have been playing well. It was nice to get the goal that got us the three points.”