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Roberto Mancini says Manchester City's Premier League title hopes almost finished

Image: Roberto Mancini: Only a glimmer of a chance left of retaining Premier League title

Roberto Mancini tore into his Manchester City players after the 3-1 defeat at Southampton which put a possibly fatal hole in their hopes of retaining the Premier League crown.

City were second best for large periods of the game at St Mary's and fell behind in just the seventh minute when Jason Puncheon tucked away the rebound from Rickie Lambert's strike. The reigning champions then became their own worst enemy as Steve Davis doubled the home side's lead after Hart allowed Lambert's shot to squirm through his hands. Edin Dzeko reduced the arrears before half-time but a Barry own goal early in the second half secured a first win for Saints' boss Mauricio Pochettino and left Mancini ruing his side's performance. Asked if it was a poor performance Mancini replied: "No, I don't agree, it was worse than poor." Mancini also hit out at the midweek international programme and believes a number of his players returned to City's Carrington training base looking jaded. "All of the players came back Thursday night or Friday and when you have 16 players away on international duty it is difficult to prepare," he said. "Sometimes the fixtures are ridiculous because they don't think about this but we played a bad game." City are now an outside bet to retain the Premier League crown they secured in such extraordinary standards on the final day of last season and Mancini - now 5/4 favourite with Sky Bet to be the next top flight manager to leave his job - thinks he knows what is to blame. "We need to work more. Probably we think that, because we won last year, we are top players but if you want to stay on the top for a long time you have to work always and forget what you did last year."

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