Sunderland boss Martin O'Neill says the weight of expectations on Manchester City is creating more title pressure than Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson's mind games.

The Black Cats are at City this weekend.

"All the talk of mind games makes me laugh, they really do" O'Neill told the Telegraph.

"For City, it's the weight of history more than anything else. It goes back to Kevin Keegan's outburst [at Ferguson in a television interview] in 1996 when Manchester United caught them. They [Newcastle] had that weight of history too.

"That is supposedly the best example of mind games you could come up with, but what if Newcastle had won the league that season?

"We'd be saying that was the worst example, they'd have been saying thanks Alex, that was the best motivation possible. It only became clever once the results were known at the end of the season.

""I'm not into all that and it's nothing to do with Roberto Mancini and Alex Ferguson, but more to do with City having not won the league since 68. Mancini will know it's all about player versus player, not mind games."