Roberto Mancini accused his Manchester City players of being soft after seeing them slip seven points behind Manchester United with defeat at “lucky” Sunderland. City went down by the only goal for the third successive season at the Stadium of Light, while their neighbours came from behind three times to defeat Newcastle 4-3 at Old Trafford to extend their lead at the top. Mancini insisted his men had only themselves to blame after not making the most of the chances they created before succumbing to former team-mate Adam Johnson’s 53rd-minute strike. Mancini said: “We deserved to win this game. We had a lot of chances, we played well, but we didn’t score. “This is our problem, we don’t score, we don’t score enough goals to win the game. “Last year, we scored one, two, three goals every game. Now when we have chances, we are too soft and this is not good. “We are too soft in attack, too soft when we have chances, too soft when we shoot. Sometimes we don’t shoot, we want to have one touch more. This is not good.” Defeat at Sunderland, coupled with United’s home victory over Newcastle, saw Sir Alex Ferguson’s men reach the halfway stage of the Premier League season with a commanding lead, but one the Italian is confident is far from decisive. He said after the 1-0 loss: “It hasn’t changed. At this moment, United are better than us, they are at the top, but we have time to recover. “We need to resolve our problems before and after, maybe we can win. It’s no problem, seven points.
