Roberto Mancini has admitted that City’s failure to qualify for the Europa League does give them an advantage when it comes to retaining their Premier League crown.
City’s 1-0 defeat away at Dortmund confirmed that the Blues will not contest any form of European football after Christmas.
“Clearly this can help us win the Premier League because we don’t play in the Europa League but we tried to play in it and that was our tactic tonight,” Mancini said.
Dortmund’s formidable home record always made winning tonight’s game a huge ask for Mancini’s men and the Italian identified results earlier in the competition as the root causes for their European failure.
“Last season we did better – this year we had a difficult group but if you make mistakes in the first two or three games it’s difficult to recover,” he said.
“I don’t think that we lost our qualification tonight, we lost it before - tonight we tried but we’re missing players and we had chances but we didn’t take them.
“We wanted to qualify for the Europa League but to win you need to score.”
Their hosts for the night qualified unbeaten from the competition’s so-called Group of Death with 14 points and Mancini pointed to their record last season as evidence of the unpredictable nature of the tournament.
“The Champions League is strange,” he said, “Borussia went out in the group stages last year and, like us, they were in last place and now this year I believe they are one of the teams that can win it - every year it can change.”
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