Ancelotti : Not worried about defeat...I am !!

So following on from my report on the defeat at Eastlands yesterday and our third away defeat of the season Carlo Ancelotti spoke to the press. This is what he had to say:

"We don't have any reason to be worried. We are doing well at the moment but today it was difficult because Manchester City played very well. We are top of the league and we have two more points than Manchester United so we do not need anything extra. We were disappointed with the referee, I am surprised because I consider Howard Webb to be a fantastic referee but we felt it was a handball by Richards. I did feel we deserved to draw, but we lost.

Firstly I am really surprised in his comment that we do not need anything extra?! We had the chance to stay five points clear of United and blew it. OK, we are still top and HAVE to regroup and build on our lead starting with Everton at home next week but going into the game yesterday we SHOULD of maintained our lead.

Onto the referee's performance and looking at the game again he made mistakes time and time again. Yes City fans for both sides. But come on, you have all seen the replays, Lescott's grapple on JT in the box was a definate penalty and Toure more or less did the same on Drogba. But I guess you get referee mistakes week in week out in the Premier League and yesterday this was highlighted for all to see.

Moving on and the most important thing for me about the game yesterday and our performance. How can we go from the sublime to the ridiculous yesterday. I know it maybe an over-reaction at such a short time after the game, and yes we did have our chances to level up through Drogba twice and the penalty from Lampard. We go from such a professional performance at the Emirates to lackluster yesterday and again signs of old from the likes of Ashley Cole and Didier Drogba in their reactions to ridiculous refereeing decisions. Cole walking away from the referee with his back turned (very spurs away) and Drogba moaning to the referee while Bridge was injured is signs from those two we don't wanna see. Ivanovic's reaction to the referee towards the end of the game was appaling and I think we all saw what he thought of the decision on TV last night.

All I am saying is that we should of been playing much better to not even be in these situations. Some people have questioned why he changed the side from the Arsenal game which is fair point. But I guess Joe Cole played in the week against Blackburn whereas the others were rested so thats why Deco came back into the side, but at the same time so did Ballack and he played?. Do we look at the Blackburn game and the team selection and should we of kept the same side and fluidity to ensure we remained at a consistant level of performance. If we did surely we would of been through to the Carling Cup quarter finals and had a positive result yesterday.

What was evident towards the end of the game was that City were working so hard to pressure the man on the ball, they were clinging onto the result and as I mentioned before De Jong would of thrown his body at everything. The result means so much to City and without doubt we should of matched their level of performance throughout the game. Ok, as we have said the Ref played his part but I can assure you in that dressing room their were certain players who knew their level of performance and workrate did not match Citys and thats what we need to address.

Let's hope that we can get our act together once more as we did after the Wigan and Villa defeats and get our League form back on track. With the next game on Saturday at home to Everton Ancelotti has a long wait.

CAREFREE & KTBFFH