Notts County 1 Manchester C 1:ROBERTO MANCINI is exploring his options in the transfer market after discovering that Adam Johnson will miss the next three months, and possibly the rest of the season, with an ankle injury.

Johnson was hurt in training on Thursday and a second scan has shown that the injury is worse than first anticipated, meaning he will probably need an operation to repair his ankle ligaments.

“We’ve lost Adam for three months,” Mancini said. “He’s possibly out for the rest of the season or maybe back for the FA Cup final. It’s the same injury (Aleksandar) Kolarov suffered earlier this season and it’s a big problem for us.”

Possible involvement in a cup final looked a long way away yesterday when for a short while it looked as though Manchester City would be subjected to the kind of humiliation that was supposed to belong to a different era.

Notts County, 59 places below them in the league ladder, led through a 59th-minute goal from an archetypal journeyman and the richest club on earth were staring at the possibility of becoming the story of the weekend for all the wrong reasons.

However, Edin Dzeko’s first goal for his new club, 10 minutes from the end of normal time, came at a telling moment, considering the swarm of locusts that would have headed City’s way had they not been able to score an equaliser against the 18th-placed side in League One.

The €31 million signing from Wolfsburg spared his employers a chastening experience and the two sides will replay on the weekend of the fifth round.

City’s manager, Roberto Mancini, expressed his regret that the draw had added another game to a cluttered fixture list but there was also an immense sense of relief on the part of the Premier League club after they had come so close to their lowest point under the ownership of the Abu Dhabi royal family.

When Dzeko turned in the equaliser he did not do so in the midst of the all-out assault that might have been anticipated.

For any club with Notts County’s resources, a second match will in one sense feel like a victory. In another, however, there was a sense of disappointment because City were looking vulnerable after Neal Bishop had flashed a header past Joe Hart from Alan Gow’s corner.

All the ingredients were there for the FA Cup upset, not least a muddy and inhospitable pitch, its few patches of grass remaining after it staged two games involving Nottingham Rugby Club in a week.

Bishop, a midfielder who had played non-league football until the age of 26, with York City, Scarborough, Whitby Town and Spennymoor, would have been the classic FA Cup hero.

City had dominated long spells of the match, with the midfield trio of Patrick Vieira, Gareth Barry and Yaya Toure controlling the tempo. Yet there was little creativity, with Carlos Tevez, Adam Johnson and Mario Balotelli missing through injury and David Silva on the bench.

In that 21-minute spell when City were staring at an ignominious exit from the competition, it did seem as though the Italian may have been guilty of underestimating his opponents in his desire to rest players.

Mancini said that his side would not have deserved to lose.

“We played in their half for the first 45 minutes,” he said, but he must have been alarmed by his team’s inability to get behind the home defence.

The Brazilian striker Jo is surely running out of chances to establish himself and Dzeko generally had a difficult time against the young Notts County centre-half Krystian Pearce.

“He needs time to understand English football,” Mancini said. “He needs another four or five games.”

Mancini had replaced Jo with Silva shortly after the goal and the Spaniard was involved in the equaliser. Micah Richards sprinted away on the right, latching on to Silva’s pass, and the full-back delivered the best cross of the match for Dzeko to turn in a volley from inside the six-yard area.