Manuel Pellegrini has vowed Manchester City cannot let Chelsea escape at the top of the Premier League if they want to topple Jose Mourinho’s empire – ahead of a visit from Roma.
City remain five points adrift of the league leaders after a hard-fought victory at the KC stadium, beating Hull City 4-2.
With a busy fixture list coming up, manager Pellegrini insisted that keeping up with Jose Mourinho’s side, who beat Aston Villa 3-0 at home, was a primary target.
“It was very important to win here and get three points away from home, because we cannot drop more points and allow Chelsea to get a bigger difference,” he told the club’s website.
“We have a very important Champions League game on Tuesday against Roma, who won their first game, but we were just thinking about this match today.”
New signing Eliaquim Mangala will also be looking forward to the clash with the Romans after enduring a nightmare in Hull.
The France international, who had fans purring after an impressive debut, had a horror show after scoring an own goal in calamitous style before giving away a penalty.
But his team mates spared his blushes with Sergio Aguero, a brace from Edin Dzeko and new Blue goal machine Frank Lampard all on target.
And Pellegrini was happy to give the travelling fans a goal-fest and is hoping for more of the same in the future, despite some uncharacteristic mistakes.
“I am very happy for the fans, I think it is important for them to see the team play in this way. I think they enjoyed last season and we hope it can be the same this year,” he said.
“We started really well and we were very unlucky with two individual mistakes. But that is normal sometimes.
“In the second half we continued playing in the same way that we started the game and we scored two goals and we had three or four more clear chances.”
City entertain AS Roma tomorrow, looking for their first win of the Champions League campaign after a heart-breaking last-gasp defeat to Bayern Munich in their opening fixture.
Image courtesy of BBC via YouTube with thanks
