Wigan reax

Sam Wallace, The Independent

Mark Hughes' team racked up their eighth away point of the season at this outpost of north-west football, which gives them a total only three short of the amount they earned for the whole of last season. They saw out the draw with only 10 men after Pablo Zabaleta's dismissal. They are one point off the Champions League places. And yet with City's lofty ambitions this might count as a disappointment.

This game made it two points from the last three games for City, not quite the run Hughes will have envisaged but there are good reasons for all those results: a last-minute defeat to Manchester United in controversial circumstances, a hard-fought draw at Villa Park before the international break and yesterday's draw playing with 10 men for 25 minutes. Even so, there can be no mistakes against Fulham at home on Sunday.

Daniel Taylor, The Guardian

It is a measure of Manchester City's new ambitions that they will have been disappointed not to have completed a second-half recovery, even having had to play the last 25 minutes with only 10 men. Pablo Zabaleta's second yellow card will cost him a one-match suspension but, of more immediacy, it significantly damaged their hopes of concocting a winning goal.

Oliver Kay, The Times

Hughes did not whine excessively about the sending-off or about a “nailed-on” penalty appeal that was rejected late on when Wright-Phillips felt he was tripped by Maynor Figueroa. He seemed to accept that, with numerous players missing through injury and others jaded after their exertions on international duty, this represented a decent result, one that seemed to confirm their ability to challenge towards the top end of the Barclays Premier League. Certainly, as Hughes talked afterwards of his belief that City and other clubs — presumably Aston Villa, Everton and Tottenham Hotspur — were threatening the “feeling of invincibility” among the established elite, it was hard not to share his confidence.