Manchester City 1 Stoke C 1:ROBERTO MANCINI argued that his team had played well and the first instinct was to check whether his fingers were crossed behind his back. His team, he said, should have won and he proclaimed himself happy with their efforts, despite the different vibes you could have picked up from his body language.

At half-time Mancini was back in the dugout several minutes before the restart, hands pressed into his pockets, glowering with an expression that said: “Leave well alone.”

As he approaches two months in the job, one of the Manchester City manager’s more noticeable traits is that he is not one to criticise his players publicly and the message here was little more than Sven-Goran Eriksson’s old mantra of “first-half good, second-half not so good”. He seemed taken aback when it was put to him that the most expensively assembled team in English football looked “flat” and he argued that Stoke City did not deserve a replay, and even sounded like he meant it.

Supporters are not so forgiving and the lesson for Mancini on Saturday was that, even when the stadium has 18,000 empty seats, they can sure make a din at the final whistle if they are not happy. The boos have been louder in the past, but there was palpable frustration about the home side’s shortcomings, whether it be Kolo Toure’s distribution, Emmanuel Adebayor’s half-heartedness or the inability of Patrick Vieira, albeit on the pitch for only 17 minutes, to do anything to quell the argument that he is a player on the wane. Vieira deserves longer but the first impressions are not favourable.

Mancini, though, was not willing to accept that his team suddenly look laboured. “No, I don’t think so. The last game, when we won against Bolton, we played so-so. This night we played very well in the first half. Second half: so-so. But we didn’t have Carlos (Tevez), we didn’t have (Craig) Bellamy, we lost (Martin) Petrov 10 minutes into the second half. But the squad played very well.”

Tevez had returned to Argentina because of a family issue and will not be involved when the two teams renew acquaintances in the league tomorrow. The replay is Wednesday week and Tony Pulis, Stoke’s manager, must be tempted to play Rory Delap from the start given the way the substitute’s brilliantly executed throws exposed the flaws in Mancini’s zonal marking system, culminating in Ricardo Fuller’s equaliser.

Pulis noted how many other teams now had a long-throw specialist, identifying Gareth Bale at Tottenham Hotspur among others, but observed: “Maybe we just do it better.”

The downside for Pulis was the nature of Shaun Wright-Phillips’s opening goal, a moment of tragicomedy that Ryan Shawcross will remember as one of the more embarrassing moments in his career.

Wright-Phillips had got in behind the Stoke defence and lobbed the onrushing Thomas Sorensen.

Shawcross, running towards his own goal, not only missed his attempted clearance but fell to the floor and the ball bounced off his head to leave Wright-Phillips with an open goal.