As crucial a win as they come for City who are now unbeaten in six games in the race for Champions League qualification. And so to the rival gaffers views of the day out in Laandaarn…
Roberto Mancini:
‘We played a good game, were very strong and we deserved to win. It wasn’t as comfortable as it perhaps should have been in the end, but Fulham fought well and were maybe a little tired after their game against Juventus.’
The suave City gaffer was clearly delighted with Crocky Santa Cruz’s 4th goal in 6 City starts and Carlos ‘El Apache’ Tevez’s respective 22nd goal in 30:
‘We started well, scored two great goals and had many chances to make the game safe a long time before Fulham scored. I thought the whole team played really well, but we needed to take one of the chances early in the second half.’
Hinting that City are now going on the offensive for this 10 game mini-season he went on:
‘We played with four attack-minded players in Roque Santa Cruz, Carlos Tevez, Adam Johnson and Craig Bellamy, but it was important that we had a good balance throughout the rest of the team and if we have this, we can play in this style. This was a great win for us because this is a difficult ground to come to and not many teams win here.’
Roy Hodgson:
The Fulham boss was in a defiant mood:
‘I thought the team did remarkably well to come back and had much the better of the second-half and came close to an equaliser.
‘It was tough to come in two-nil down at half-time to the two counter attacks that we didn’t defend well enough. We had a couple of close shaves in the first-half – I wasn`t that satisfied with our first-half performance.
‘In the second-half we did much better and I would have liked the game to have gone on a bit longer. Maybe I would have liked to have seen two penalties given instead of one.
‘I don’t think that we were out-run or out-powered; I thought that our players worked very hard throughout the 90 minutes. We got back to two-one and came very close to two-two but we couldn’t quite make it. City were much happier to hear the final whistle than we were.’
VMC City Video Link: Mancio Post Match Pitchside at Craven Cottage
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