Mancini ''not surprised'' by Europa League defeat

Roberto Mancini revealed that he was not surprised with his side’s Europa League defeat by Sporting, and expressed his wish that Machester City captain, Vincent Kompany, can be return to action in a fortnight’s time, after being forced off the pitch with a leg injury.

The Citizens conceded a 1-0 defeat against Sporting, in Lisbon, but Kompany only made it to the first 10 minutes of the match, as he had to be substituted with a leg injury.

“We have to wait one or two days to know the exact extent of his injury, but it is a problem with his calf. I hope to have Kompany back in 10 days or two weeks, but we have other solutions,” Mancini told reporters.

Then, the Italian man said he was not surprised by his side’s defeat against Sporting Lisbon, even though he considered it not to be a fair result, accusing the hosts of playing with ten men behind the ball.

“This result was not a surprise, anything can happen in football. I do not think we deserved to lose. We did not play well, we had chances to score, but we didn’t,” he added.

“We have bigger chances to go through. It will be a different game in Manchester. When we have chances to score, we will score.”

“I don’t think Sporting had a lot chances to score. We played like this because Sporting played with all their men behind the ball for all 90 minutes; they wanted to hit us on the counter. We played slow sometimes because we found 10 players behind the ball. We had more chances to score than Sporting,” Mancini stated.

“We did not underestimate them. Every game is difficult and different, we tried to play good football, sometimes we can, sometimes we can’t. We did not underestimate them. Football is strange. We have another game and we have more chances to win the next game,” he concluded.

Europa League 2011/12 2012/03/08, 18:00, Lisboa Sporting 1:0 Man. City  Xandão 51' Video 03:19 Watch video > Match Events >

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