Stoke reax

Duncan White, Sunday Telegraph

So it is to Mancini’s great credit that he came out of this game with a debut victory. It was on the, ahem, efficient end of the scale but with a clean sheet and a few chances to spare the City fans will not be complaining. Indeed the Italian will take particular pleasure from his direct tactical intervention precipitate the opening goal.

Paul Wilson, The Observer

The Italian has barely been at Eastlands a week, yet home fans were complimenting their new manager at the end for supervising a boring match. Gone was the comedy of errors of last week. City were sober and sensible, purposeful and poised, and they were rewarded with only their second home clean sheet of the season in the league. "I'm very happy," Mancini said afterwards, still sporting the sky blue City scarf he had worn during the game. "We played very well in the first half and only so-so in the second, but the most important thing was that we won."

Ian Herbert, Independent on Sunday

Gone was some of the carefree, attacking football which has seen City score three goals on each of eight outings this season but look so defensively brittle as well. Serious defensive scares were not entirely absent but the result was their first league clean sheet since the goalless draw at Birmingham on 1 November.

Jonathan Northcroft, Sunday Times

One cloud, though, curled across the new blue moon. City more or less had to secure three points using 10 men, so risible was Robinho. The Brazilian’s parlous levels of effort and motivation were not boosted, as might have been expected, by the arrival of a new manager and yesterday his touch and creative input were poor. The only good thing he did was an accident, his miscued shot from close range following a buccaneering run by Carlos Tevez slicing straight into Petrov’s path for Petrov to make it 1-0 after 28 minutes. Everything else in Robinho’s game was awry and he had just run the ball out of play after his close control failed when Mancini replaced him with Craig Bellamy.

Rob Draper, Mail on Sunday

There was a new tactical approach, City alternating between 4-3-3 in attack, with Martin Petrov joining Carlos Tevez and Robinho, and 4-4-2 in defence, with Petrov dropping and Gareth Barry moving left.

Yet there was scant evidence of improvement in defence, despite the double training sessions in the week. After £220million spent in 18 months, City still have a rotten back four.