Source: Man_City
Mancini banks on a Fulham hangover
Roberto Mancini walked out of Craven Cottage on Thursday night hoping that his side had just been handed a slight advantage for Sunday's league showdown at the same venue. Fulham were leading Juventus 3-1, meaning the scores were level on aggregate, and the Cottagers were heading for a punishing half-hour of extra time in their 48th game of the season. Mancini nipped out to miss the worst of the west London traffic, and Bobby Zamora netted a winner to give Fulham one of the greatest results in their history - a 4-1 win over the Italian giants. Now City's Italian boss waits to see whether the result lifts Roy Hodgson's side ahead of their encounter, or whether it will be a case of "after the Lord Mayor's show". Fulham have played Juventus twice, and United in the last fortnight, and City's game is sandwiched between those three games and Wednesday's FA Cup quarter-final replay against Spurs. "I hope they are tired!" Mancini said with a smile. "I left ten minutes before the end, thinking that 3-1 was a good score for us, because it would mean extra time, but they scored in the last few minutes. They have still had two days to recover until the game against us. "And for them this will be an important game for them. Every time a team plays City, they play 100 per cent, like Sunderland did." Difficult Mancini is hoping to maintain the tempo from the second half of that game at Sunderland, when the Blues fought back from a poor first- half display, and a goal down, to grab a late point. And he suspects that the two-week break following the 4-2 win at Chelsea may have come at a bad time, as it interrupted the flow. Now he wants his players to pick up where they left off at the Stadium of Light. "If we don't play at the same level as the opposition, it can be difficult, but I think we will do a good job on Sunday. "It was important to end up with a draw at Sunderland, but it is also important to start well. For me we lost two points, as it was important we won that game. "We didn't play for two weeks, and maybe that caused a problem at the start of the game. But now it is important that we continue in the way we finished at Sunderland. "I am frustrated because in the second half of that game we had seven, eight chances to score a goal. Maybe if we had taken one of the chances we had early in the second half we would have won the game." Now Mancini needs his side to produce against a side which has only lost once in the last 19 home games, and includes Juventus, United and Liverpool among the scalps they have taken on their own turf this season. "It will be a difficult game at Fulham, as we saw when they played Juventus," he said. "They played a fantastic game because after 30 minutes they were losing, then scored four goals. "They are a strong team with a good manager. I knew about Roy Hodgson when he worked in Italy and he did very well at Inter. I have a lot of respect for him as he is a good manager. We will need to play 200 per cent." Should City attack Fulham or play on the counter? Have your say. | Submit Comments| Comments (1)| PrintWhat's this? Emaildel.icio.usDiggredditFacebookStumbleUponNewsvineGoogle BookmarksNetscapeTechnoratiWindows LiveYahoo! MyWebMa.gnolia
