Those poor lambs amongst the playing staff at Manchester City have been assured that they’ll be gifted a new manager who will have no compunction in pandering to their enormous egos.

The lambs, poor, suffered the ignominy of losing out on a third major domestic honour in consecutive years when Ben Watson’s late header decided the weekend’s FA Cup final in Wigan Athletic’s favour.

In what is already being described as “well shocking, as madly shocking as whatever other mad shock you could care to mention”, City were beaten by a side from the same division as them – and it’s not as if we ever see ‘surprising’ results between teams in the same league as each other, for crying out loud.

Speaking exclusively to Football Burp, a City player who wished to remain anonymous claimed that Roberto Mancini would often visit the players in their dreams and call them “all sorts” while “sweeping his luxurious locks from shoulder to shoulder of his latest designer blazer”.

Gareth Barry said: “Last night I dreamed he was in a floating bath tub and he kept calling me a ‘twonk’.

“You’d think he’d at least denigrate us in Italian, even if it does only exist in our subconscious and most of us don’t speak Italian.

“That’s just bad man management. If he’d brought me breakfast in bed and given me a foot massage, I mightn’t have played like a total divvy in the cup final.”

England midfielder Barry, formerly of Aston Villa, continued: “If you ask me, it’s typical of the man – he seems to have little or no interest in establishing a relationship with his players. That’s all well and good if you’re capable of motivating yourself, but that kind of thing is easier said than done when you’re staring down the barrel of two hundred grand every week.

“This one time, I stayed in bed reading my paycheck over and over again, for a whole week. I phoned Roberto to tell him I’d contracted Dengue fever but he hadn’t even realised I was missing.

“It was only when David Platt asked if anyone had laid the cones out on the training pitch that he twigged who I actually was. Honestly, I’ve barely missed a cone all season and that’s the treatment I get.

“That’s well off.”

Speaking exclusively to Football Burp, Mancini shrugged.

What did Roberto Mancini mean by that shrug? Have your say in the comments section below…