Obviously Roberto has many positives but his tactics in Europe are very poor.

Last year we were far to open and attacking.

This game we gave far to much space to Ronaldo. We also defended very deep, which of itself is OK but if you do that playing 3 midgets up front was never going to work. In fact Nasri's injury helped as Kolarov gave us far more defensively and in an attacking sense than the ineffectual frenchman.

If you are going to defend deep you need like Chelsea last year a Drogba. We don-t have one but at least Edin has a bit of height. We were more of a threat with him on.

We didn't deserve to win. First half we were lucky.

Its worrying losing at places like Lisbon and Kiev is very poor and its seems apart from the odd match everytime we go away to a half decent team we're always on the back foot.

OP - jog on.

Its not about 3 midgets up front. You don't need 6ft attacking players to score goals or win football games.

Mancini's problem is that he is either too defensive or too attacking. This is the the kind of game Scott Sinclair would have been useful in. Mancini used Nasri and Silva as wide players with 6 defensive players. It is suicide against a team like Madrid. not only that once Nasri picked up a knock, he made a negative substitution(Kolarov). City were now playing with 7 defensive players and 3 attacking players. Toure, Silva, Tevez spent much of the game isolated.

once Madrid decided to apply pressure, it was over for us.

I'm backing our manager.

Yeah we raced into a 2-1 lead...

Mancini got the line-up spot on and his subs were great too, not his fault Zaba didn't play well for once.

It's his big challenge his Europa track record is not good at all. That's why Inter got rid of him in the end the lack of CL success.

Hope he wont end the same way here. But with Inter he managed to get to the quarter finals 2-3 times.

But not going trough from group stages two times in a row is a lot worse actually. (After spending thse amounts on the squad.)

Last year was a big lesson but he should learn from it. And I'm not talking about today it was a loss or maybe a draw before the match. Crazy that we could win it but lost, it's harder to swallow then a simple 2-0 loss, but it was always about the other 5 matches.

Mainly the two Ajax and two Dortmund matches. Without getting at least (!) 10 points in them we are out once again. And we have a lot stronger squad than Ajax/Dortmund (or Napoli last year). If we cant make this difference to matter it is the manager's fail.
Death group but it doesnt have to be the death group for us.
It should be for Dortmund and Ajax now it all depends on Mancini and the players.

First step: beat Dortmund next time. And then Ajax twice.

How did we not realise after 20 mins when we should have been 3-0 down that perhaps doubling up on Ronaldo could be a useful tactic. Turned out to be our downfall in the end up, after we had the whole game to correct it.

Milner should have been on the pitch doubling up on CRonaldo for me.

Mancini still has a lot he needs to improve on, just like most of the players and us as a set of fans. The OP has a right to make the point.