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63: April 2013

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Mancini remains cautious

Roberto Mancini continued to play down Manchester City's Premier League title chances despite seeing his side take a giant stride towards glory with a 2-0 victory over Newcastle at St James' Park.

City will clinch their first top-flight crown since 1968 if they overcome relegation-threatened Queens Park Rangers, and former manager Mark Hughes, at the Etihad Stadium next weekend.

Yaya Toure scored two priceless goals for Mancini's men to secure victory in the North East, curling home from the edge of the area in the 70th minute before sweeping home a second in the closing moments after hitting the Magpies on the break.

Despite the success, City's Italian manager remained coy over their chances of claiming glory in England's top division for the first time in 44 years.

Pressure

He told Sky Sports: "I hope, but I think it is not enough. We have another game, a difficult game like today.

"The pressure is not important now. What is important now is that we have 86 points. We have another game. I will only be confident after QPR.

"It was difficult because Newcastle are a good team. I think we deserved to win because we had a lot of chances.

"In the first half we deserved to score, but they defended very well. In the second half it was the same, but after Yaya's goal we had three or four incredible chances.

"In games like this you should play well if you want to win and it will be the same in the next game on Sunday.

"It is sometimes better to score very quickly, but today was difficult. Newcastle are a good team, they played well, but it was important that we finished very well."

Important

The key moment in the match was arguably Mancini's decision to send on midfield enforcer Nigel de Jong in place of Samir Nasri in the early stages of the second half with the score still 0-0.

That allowed Toure greater freedom to push forward and within nine minutes of the change the Ivory Coast international had broken the deadlock.

But Mancini was not keen to take too much credit for the decision, saying: "I thought he was an important player in that position. For this reason I did that after 10 minutes."