Pablo deserved more

The City kit boss and former Latics star writes every week for Chron Sport

AS you can imagine, everyone at City felt very flat after the 3-2 defeat by United at the Etihad Stadium.

After battling back from 2-0 down to level at 2-2 following a strong second half performance, we looked worthy of at least a point and the momentum seemed to be with us.

But as is so often the case against United, they punished us with virtually the last kick of the game and we came away empty-handed.

The late manner of the defeat and other recent losses to our biggest rivals is so hard to take, not just for the players and staff but the supporters as well.

I also felt sorry for Pablo Zabaleta who, after taking the captain's armband from injured skipper Vincent Kompany early in the first half, had a storming game and equalised with just five minutes remaining.

He is such a brilliant guy to have around and is so versatile — he is comfortable at left back, right back, in midfield, and has a cracking shot on him, as we saw.

That second half display nearly earned us a point. The winner, despite being well struck by Robin Van Persie, did have a touch of good fortune about it because the ball ricocheted off Samir Nasri's leg on its way towards goal. But that’s football. We have to try to deal with it.

The lads were naturally gutted but all they can do now is attempt to bounce back on Saturday, when we travel to Newcastle.

We won there last season of course, just a week or so before winning the title, but it is never an easy place to play. Alan Pardew has a lot of very good players. They have not been in a rich vein of form, but they have had a lot of injuries in key areas.

Although the weather forecast for the North-East isn’t great, we have gone there before in testing

conditions and the game has gone ahead as scheduled. Let's hope the conditions are relatively kind up there — we’re back in Sunderland on Boxing Day!