Mancini on the brink

ROBERTO Mancini must be experiencing an acute sense of deja-vu as intense speculation he is about to lose his job as Manchester City manager continues to go unchecked.

Mancini has been oblivious to the growing sense of disenchantment around him over the past few weeks. Even as the rumours intensified, he continued to think he was safe.

But amid reports the Italian is going to be axed before City take on Reading in the Premier League tomorrow, Mancini could not help recalling how he ended up leaving Inter Milan in 2008.

"When I worked for Inter Milan, the newspapers were the same as they are here and I thought always 'it's not true, it's not true'," he said.

"We had won Serie A for the third time in a row and then played in the Italian Cup final. But after that game I read the Corriere della Sera, a newspaper which is very close with Inter, and a journalist wrote that probably Inter will sack me.

"At that moment I understood that maybe it was true."

Those words were delivered on Saturday night, when Mancini insisted he felt confident he would remain in his job despite the 1-0 FA Cup final defeat to Wigan.

Yet the support he also demanded did not follow.