Despite winning three Serie A titles with Inter, there's been a general feeling in England that Roberto Mancini was an underwhelming appointment at Manchester City. And Mark Lawrenson in the Daily Mirror feels the Italian needs to finish in the top four to prove that he can step up to the elite class of bosses.

"Roberto Mancini was a world class player but is still on the B list in management terms.

That is why Manchester City have been rightly criticised for getting rid of Mark Hughes to replace him with Mancini.

Maybe it would be slightly easier to understand if City had got rid of Hughes to bring in Jose Mourinho.

But while Mancini did well at Inter Milan and has a wonderful reputation as a glorious attacking player, question marks remain about his ability as a manager.

Mancini is on the second tier of managers, well behind Mourinho or Guus Hiddink and they are the sort of coaches that City really need.

Instead, this whole messy merry-go-round has left a nasty taste in the mouth and also put the spotlight on Mancini.

Maybe Mancini will be the shot in the arm that City need to reach the top four. It’s pretty clear that City don’t have patience and won’t hang around so it’s surely top four or bust for Mancini."

But while Garry Cook has been getting an all-round kicking for his part in the sacking of Mark Hughes and appointment of Mancini, Patrick Barclay in the Times is offering something of a defence.

"For a manager such as Mark Hughes, being sacked must be a bit like dying and yet staying alive, in the sense that you get to read the glowing tributes about your managerial abilities.

This is not to make light of what Manchester City’s owners did to Hughes last Saturday — to be deprived of a job, even a hellish one, must hurt — but to question a tone of bewilderment that suggested everyone had felt that he was bound to do well at the club in the fullness of time.

Was his sacking really a disgrace, a travesty, the bottom of a moral pit? It wasn’t even the least reasonable sacking conducted by City. Peter Reid could claim to have suffered that four matches into the 1993-94 season.

Sackings are never pleasant and what I liked about the reports of Hughes’s was that, instead of shooting the messenger, they settled for beating him up. Garry Cook, the chief executive, deserved a bit, too, but the bullets were rightly directed at the Abu Dhabi ruler who owns City, Sheikh Mansour, and his henchman-in-chief, Khaldoon al-Mubarak. As James Ducker, our reporter, observed in our account of Roberto Mancini’s introductory press conference, at least Cook had the decency to turn up."