Mancini’s claim when he took over last December that City could win the Barclays Premier League next season is ringing very hollow indeed, because he may not even get the opportunity to try. The Italian knows from personal experience that City’s owners and their hired hands can be extremely ruthless when they deem it necessary, so should learn his fate soon.

City’s insistence for the past few days has been that Mancini’s future is not an issue, but they made similar sounds before Mark Hughes was surprisingly sacked before Christmas and so it should not be taken at face value. The phone lines between Abu Dhabi and Manchester will be humming with activity over the next few days.

Mancini has a break clause in the three years remaining on his contract so would be easy to dispense with if City see fit — and unlike Hughes his departure would not be mourned by the fans — but finding a betterqualified replacement will be more difficult than wielding the axe. The former Inter Milan coach was the compromise candidate in the first place given the paucity of alternatives, and not much has changed, especially given that the club cannot offer the platform and riches of the Champions League.

City’s dream target of José Mourinho is off limits, with the Portuguese likely to go to Real Madrid after leading Inter to their first European Cup final in 38 years, and the rest of the field does not make inspiring reading.

Rafael Benítez rejected a tentative approach last summer and his stock has fallen since; Frank Rijkaard’s star is also on the wane and those more celebrated Dutch coaches — Guus Hiddink and Louis van Gaal — are at an age when the days of taking on demanding new challenges at up-and-coming clubs are behind them.

All of which points towards Mancini at least starting next season in charge, but something has to change if the grandly titled City project is to regain the momentum that initially stunned the football world two years ago. With the manager remaining in situ for the immediate future it has to be the players, many of whom let down Mancini badly last night. Emmanuel Adebayor looked utterly uninterested, Craig Bellamy was not his usual fiery self and were it not for several good saves from Martin Fulop, their emergency loan goalkeeper, City would have been well beaten.

England won their crucial World Twenty20 clash against Ireland to ensure that they would progress into the latter stages of the tournament. They did so with the help of Eoin Morgan, who has represented Ireland in international cricket, and Mike Selvey in the Guardian pays tribute to a player who can bisect the opposition's field placings at will.

Had England not progressed beyond the group stages of the World Twenty20, it would no doubt have provided mirth around the cricket globe, but would nonetheless have been a travesty. On Monday, their total of 191 for five equalled the highest of the tournament so far and even given the incendiary start that Chris Gayle had given to the West Indies reply, so crucial in their Duckworth-Lewis success, they were heavy favourites to have won a full match. Similarly against Ireland the following day when a capricious pitch and fervent opposition produced a consequently lower score that would have still been a winning one had the game gone the distance. In the end the weather settled for giving them no more than a bit of a hurry-up.

In Bridgetown today, though, begins the tournament proper, the Super Eights, at the end of which England will either be heading to the semi-finals or Gatwick. To progress, they will play and almost certainly have to beat each of Pakistan, South Africa and New Zealand, starting with Pakistan, the current champions, at Kensington Oval. It will be no easy task.

Pakistan have been mavericks in the past and remain so now, but itinerant ones. Because of security concerns in the wake of the Lahore attack on the Sri Lankans, they have been a wandering side for a while now, based in the Middle East. This summer they are at home to Australia in Test matches at Lord's and Headingley. But, for all that, as England's coach Andy Flower points out, they are dangerous. They may be a side in turmoil, with senior players getting life bans for alleged disruptive behaviour, but there are half a dozen remaining from the team who lifted the trophy in England last year, and Shahid Afridi, the mavericks' maverick, is an inspirational figure with ball and bat.

England will need all their resource to cope today on a pitch that will offer a little more to the batsmen, in terms of pace with the new ball, than did Providence. Probably, they will need to repeat the team batting performance of the West Indies match, in which the highest power-play score of the event to date was followed by an impressive total. They will need the sort of start given by Michael Lumb and Craig Kieswetter in the first match but not reproduced in more challenging conditions in the second.

They will require contributions from Paul Collingwood and the expectant father Kevin Pietersen, whose innings have been conspicuous by their absence of runs so far, and then they will hope for a continuation of the form of the young sorcerer Eoin Morgan who twice, each time in the company of Luke Wright, systematically and clinically bailed them out of trouble.

Flower is understandably reluctant to place undue pressure on Morgan, 23, by categorising him in a list of leading one-day batsmen, but there is no doubt that in the year since he began his England career, he has established his credential as an astounding player in the short forms of the game and on his way, perhaps, to superstardom.