Sven-Goran Eriksson

CITY'S chastised players saw a fresh side to their manager on Monday.

Manager Sven-Goran Eriksson showed them a dvd nasty of their 3-1 defeat at Birmingham - and then sternly warned them of the consequences of a repeat.

The squad found that the Blues boss had not softened his post match stance at St Andrew's, when he heaped the blame on the players collectively and refused to use eccentric refereeing from Rob Styles as an excuse for the ambition-denting defeat.

By the time they left the Carrington video lounge, the senior players were in no doubt about what was expected of them against title-chasing Chelsea this weekend.

"We looked at the recording of the game and then I spoke to them," revealed the normally placid Eriksson, who ran out of patience on a weekend when the Blues' main Euro-qualification rivals also stumbled.

"I think we should do better and we have to do better, and that is what I told them. It is good for them to see how they behaved on the pitch. Hopefully, we will now play better.

"It had an immediate effect at least, because the training session we did afterwards was better than we had played at Birmingham.

"No-one liked that performance. We have to change our mentality. If we are having an afternoon when we cannot pass the ball as well as we can do, then the least we should be doing is battling as hard as our opponents, and we did not even do that - especially in the first-half."

Although the manager has repeatedly suggested that some of the new players from abroad have to be cut some slack in their first season, and will be better for the experience of a first campaign in the English top flight, Eriksson is not prepared to take tiredness late in the season as an excuse for throwing away winnable points.

"If there is tiredness then it is not in the legs, that is for sure. It is higher up in the head," he declared.

"I hope that is not the case because we are not on holiday yet. We still have a lot of work to do and challenges lie ahead.

"I know that if you play good football one week then you are not guaranteed to do so the next week, and there are many examples of that. We beat United and Spurs yet we went to Birmingham and lost so comprehensively.

"That is one challenge - to prevent things like that from happening. The message I gave to the players was very clear, because if we play against Chelsea like we did at St Andrew's then it would be better to stay at home. We would not have a chance.

"It will be a different game, I am sure of that. Our players know that I didn't like what I watched last weekend."