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Roberto Mancini has accused the rest of the Premier League of rolling over and handing Manchester United a 20th league title.

The Manchester City boss, who takes his side to Old Trafford tonight, said too many teams in the Premier League accept they are beaten before they face United.

United hold a commanding 15-point lead over City ahead of the derby, with Mancini critical of the “soft” mentality of other teams when facing Sir Alex Ferguson’s side.

“No-one plays well against United because they only play with fear,” said Mancini. “United are strong now because of this importance as a team, as a club.

“Every team that plays against United plays very soft because they think this game is difficult, that they can’t beat them.

“It’s not true. If you play strong against United, you can beat them, like they can beat us.

“This is normal, this is football, this is because United is a strong team for a long time. For the other teams they play against, it is difficult.”

Asked why teams don’t fear City the same way they do United, even though they are the reigning champions, Mancini said: “We are young as a team.

“We don’t have the same importance like United in this moment. Maybe in 10 years it will be the same. The history is very important.

“I think we need to improve as a team, as a club, but for this we need more years. We can’t do this in two years.

“For 10 years, if we improve, if we win every year, probably it will be the same also for us.

“I don’t think teams don’t play 100 per cent against United, but their mentality is poor in that game.

“They think they can do nothing but I don’t think that’s true. If you play with a good mentality, in football you can beat every team.”

(Image: Kent Gavin)

Mancini also blamed City’s poor title defence on their failure to recruit the players he wanted last summer, as well as a glut of injuries and a lack of goals.

The City boss suggested his side would be top of the Premier League and still in the Champions League had he been able to buy his top transfer targets.

“Yeah, yeah, 100 per cent,” said Mancini. “Probably we would be on top, could win the second title and probably we would be in the Champions League quarter- final.

“You want one player, maybe two or three teams want the same player and after you can take this or take another player. After, it is difficult.

“We had a chance to get three or four players who could improve our team but we didn’t in the end. Now it’s finished.

“Last year we played really well because we scored a lot of goals. We were the best defence, like this year, like two years ago.

“But this year the only difference is the goals we didn’t score. If we’d scored maybe 15 goals more, probably we would be on the top.

“We’ve been missing important goals in games we deserved to win easy - West Ham, Chelsea away, Sunderland, Arsenal at home.

“We lost a lot of points because we didn’t score enough goals. This is the difference. We also had a lot of injuries.”