By MARTIN BLACKBURN
MANCHESTER CITY could not even make the Europa League as their Champions League campaign ended in disaster.
Defeat in Dortmund meant Roberto Mancini’s men failed to win a SINGLE game in Europe’s premier competition.
And by finishing bottom of Group D, they blew the chance to play in the Europa League. Keeper Joe Hart said: “We have let ourselves down.
We have not qualified or even got in the Europa League, so that is fair to say.
“We only have ourselves to blame. We need to address it.
“We should have been fighting on the last day to be in the competition and we weren’t.
“Hopefully we’ll win the League again and then we’ll be able to deal with it next year.”
Julian Schieber got the only goal for the Germans after 57 minutes.
That meant City finished with a paltry three points from their six Group D games — with star striker Carlos Tevez failing to score even once in the competition.
It is the lowest total recorded by an English side in the group stages, one point worse than Blackburn 17 years ago.
Last season Mancini’s men went out of the Champions League at the group stage, too.
But at least they put up a bit of a fight that time, gaining 10 points as they were pipped by Napoli and eventual runners-up Bayern Munich.
This year it all went wrong in the opening game as City threw away a 2-1 lead against Real Madrid.
Mancini said: “When you start and make mistakes, like we did in the first two or three games, you cannot recover.
“The Champions League is strange, Dortmund went out in the group stage last season and this year they can win it.”
Mancini now has to pick up his men ahead of Sunday’s Manchester derby.
He added: “After tomorrow, it will be important for us to think only about the derby. We have five days to recover our strength.”
