David Platt was understandably delighted with City’s 4-0 win at Blackburn Rovers – though he never doubted the team would bounce back from the midweek defeat to Bayern Munich.

With the focus on the Blues being more about events off the pitch in the past few days, Platt said the players were desperate to get back out and play football again

Despite taking almost an hour to break down the home defence, goals from Adam Johnson, Mario Balotelli, Samir Nasri and Stefan Savic gave City an emphatic away win.

“I was confident we’d give a good performance today,” said Platt. “The games are coming so thick and fast that we can’t dwell on a defeat for too long, and we didn’t.

We needed to get back to winning ways straight away and we did that in a convincing manner today

...David Platt

“Against Fulham after our last Champions League game, we probably didn’t change things around enough so the gaffer wanted to freshen things up more today. We had half-a-dozen new faces against Blackburn and I think it showed.

“We didn’t get the ball up-field quick enough in the first half and we talked about that at half-time. Yaya Toure was getting so much time on the ball that we had to utilise that and get it forward as quickly as we could and get behind their defence more.

“We started the second-half much better, got our full-backs forward more and Adam Johnson hugged the line more, which in turn created space for others.”

Platt also had plenty of praise for Balotelli, who has scored in each of his last three appearances.

“Mario’s worked really hard for the past six weeks and has had to wait for his chance,” he said.

“With Edin and Sergio starting the season so well, he’s had to be patient but he came on last week and changed the game for us and he’s done really well today and scored again. #

It’s all about consistency and he seems to be finding it

...Platt on Mario

“He had three or four strikes on target, hit the post and then scored and I think he’s got to be delighted with his performance today.”