Manchester City boss Roberto Mancini saw his side close out a game in the 2-0 home win over Everton after having surrendered a two-goal lead to draw 2-2 at Fulham last weekend. "I think when we were 2-0 up at Fulham we finished playing for 15 minutes. We thought it was finished. We were also unlucky," he said on Sky Sports 2.
"Everton is a good team. It was really difficult. It was hard to win this game. We had a lot of shots and we were unlucky in the first half. The second half we got better."
Asked why he opted to send Balotelli on from the bench instead of Carlos Tevez, Mancini revealed the decision had been made with an eye on Tuesday's Champions League clash with Bayern Munich.
He said: "Mario can play next Tuesday in Munich so it was for this reason and also because Mario trained very well in the last four to five weeks. He deserved to play."
Five visiting players were but Everton chief David Moyes insisted his side had not been overly physical.
He said: "You have to be very careful and disciplined. We didn't go out to get yellow cards. We went out to make it hard for Manchester City and for long periods of the game we did.
"We've seen other teams getting beat heavily by Manchester City -we wanted to make sure that wasn't the case and I thought for long spells we did a good job."
Moyes was far from happy with some of the challenges that were flying in on his players.
"Some? Yeah," he said. "There was a couple of similarities in a few of the challenges - you'd expect consistency and you'd expect it to be done correctly."
Asked particularly about Kompany's tackle which injured Cahill, he replied: "I think you should be looking at that challenge instead of asking me about the other tackles."
