“We are all behind Manuel. He’s been great for this football club. So he’s continued in the way he has done for the last few years. Nothing change for him. And then we’ll see at the end of the season with the new manager coming in. We suspect changes but it’s normal but now is not the right time to talk about the future because there’s a lot of time for this.
“We just need to be 100 per cent focused on the next games.”
Pellegrini seemed to take exception to being asked such questions in his own press conference, conveniently forgetting the fact that it was he, not the media, who had put the issue of succession firmly on the agenda by announcing his departure seven days ago.
Instead, the City manager pointed to a crippling injury list, one that David Silva has now joined with an ankle problem, as his club’s main problem. City have, Pellegrini claimed, 14 fit players for a month which sees his side competing in four competitions although, having spent £432 million on assembling their current squad, presumably strength in depth should not be such an issue. “I am concerned about the few players we have to play in all the games,” Pellegrini said. “Let’s hope we can recover in the next few days.
“We didn’t have the usual energy. We’ve been using only 14 players in a very important month.
“I think we know what we must do. I don’t think we want to lose the games, to be out of any competition, so we must try to continue playing the best team that we can in every game. Players have been doing well, we had only one defeat in the previous nine games and that was the first leg of the Capital One Cup semi-final at Everton.
“So it was most unexpected the game that we played today. There are a lot of things we must analyse and try to improve, in defending and attacking, and recovering players, a lot of things, but we want to try to continue to be in every competition.”
- Telegraph