City have only won one of their last five Premier League outings and have now failed to score in their last two following goalless home draws with Manchester United and Birmingham.
The pressure is firmly on Mancini to turn around their fortunes, starting with Fulham against this weekend, and De Jong says the players are ready to fight it out.
De Jong knows City dropped points at home to Birmingham, although he was pleased the team still managed to pick up something despite being far from their best.
"We're like a boxer in the corner at the moment and we're trying to fight our way out," said the Dutch international. "We've taken a few punches and now it's time to starting battling back.
"Against Birmingham we were expected to win - and should have done because we had enough chances - but we didn't play as well as we can and they came to stifle our play.
"The important thing is, despite not being at our best, we still picked up something. What was disappointing is that a lot of teams around us also dropped points and we didn't take advantage of it."
Sunday's trip to Craven Cottage sees City take on former manager Mark Hughes and De Jong believes the game will be more interesting due to the matchup.
"It will be an interesting game on Sunday because obviously we are playing our old manager and he knows most of our squad," he continued.
"I think it will be a difficult game because even though Fulham haven't won too many matches, they haven't lost many either.
"Craven Cottage is a difficult place to go, but we have to go there looking for nothing less than three points and take the game to them."
Man. City 5/4, Fulham 11/5, Draw 9/4
View the original article here
No comments:
Post a Comment