City survived a late Chelsea rally to claim an impressive 2-1 win, meaning they will return to Wembley installed as heavy favourites to win the competition next month.
Wigan Athletic await in that showpiece game and it’s an encounter that the Premier League champions won’t take for granted, according to the Blues boss.
“I don’t think it was one of our better performances of the season, after our second goal we played like it was finished,” Mancini conceded. “When they scored it changed the game.
“We deserved to win this game but nothing is decided.
“In 90 minutes anything can happen, Wigan play good football and if we want to beat them and win the FA Cup we will have to play a very good game and prepare well.”
...Roberto Mancini...
With much of the pre-match team selection debate surrounding City’s goalkeeping position, Mancini revealed he was pleased with Costel Pantilimon’s contribution, despite the Romanian conceding a first goal in this season’s competition.
“Pantilimon is there to do what he did, Costel did very well but he’s a very good keeper – it’s what I expected,” the Italian declared.
“He’s worked very well behind Joe Hart and I think for Joe that’s very important.
“He will stay, we have four weeks to think about it but I think he will play [in the final].”
City are arguably in the best form of their season after convincingly winning the Manchester derby on Monday and putting in another excellent performance at Wembley on Sunday.
Despite this vein of form seemingly arriving too late for a title charge, Mancini suggested that he has realigned his targets for the remainder of the season.
“We could be disappointed with the Premier League because I think we had another chance to win it if we had worked well last summer but we didn’t, we made some mistakes probably,” the 48-year old confided.
“But now we are a good team, we go to the final and we have chance to get the second position and we have a chance to show we shouldn’t be 15 points behind. I think this should be our target now.”
It was a game played in a physical spirit throughout, with challenges flying in thick and fast but Chelsea were incensed that no further punishment was dished out to Sergio Aguero after a tackle on David Luiz.
City’s manager didn’t see the incident but does believe that his side may have had a penalty for a foul on Yaya Toure.
“I didn’t see it, if I saw I’d say ‘I saw’, but I do think Aguero takes a lot of kicks from defenders,” he said.
“We had six referees on the pitch and if Sergio did something wrong, they would have seen it and Sergio is a good guy.
“I think we should have had a penalty for the foul on Yaya when he took a shot.”
