CHELSEA: JOE-HART RUINED MANCHESTER CITY!

All at sea: Joe Hart is left stranded after leaving his goal and seeing team-mate Matija Nastasic head the ball over him

Picture: REUTERS

Another costly error from England's No1 goalkeeper leaves Chilean surveying some less-than-appealing alternatives between the posts.

The destabilising effect of a wobbly goalkeeper extended all the way to Manuel Pellegrini, whose suaveness broke down with Manchester City’s third away defeat of the season.

If City hired Pellegrini for a quiet life, Joe Hart’s vulnerability is the big noise in town. A keeper mumbling to himself as he leaves the pitch is never a good sign.

Hart stared straight ahead, ignored team-mates who moved to console him and muttered curses as he sought the dressing room sanctuary.

The England keeper’s heedless gallop off his line to meet a bouncing ball ended with Matija Nastasic nodding it over his head for Fernando Torres to run on and score an 90th-minute winner.

After his troubled start to Pellegrini’s first campaign in England, Hart’s form would worry any manager, from Conference level up.

“We are losing stupid points, yes,” Pellegrini agreed, after declining to shake hands with Jose Mourinho, his old sparring partner from La Liga.

City are now past the point where they can carry on excusing a goalkeeper who made a similar error in the 3-2 defeat at Aston Villa and endured a horrible night at home to Bayern Munich, where he was beaten from long range by Franck Ribery and a second time inside his near post by Arjen Robben.

Pandemonium followed the Hart-Nastasic mix-up here. Mourinho, the Chelsea manager, leapt into the crowd to embrace his son, City’s players went down on their haunches and Pellegrini lost his father-of-the-bride equanimity.

The abiding image of City’s new coach has been Roberto Mancini in reverse. In his grey suit and tie, Pellegrini stands with hands in pockets, making only minor tactical adjustments to his side.

Mancini was all operatic gesticulations. Sometimes there were histrionics. There were scraps on the training ground and incendiary press conferences. He was a martinet, always hectoring, always intolerant of City’s tendency to turn it on for the big games and relax in the small ones.

In Pellegrini, City found an opposite. His press conferences are bland, his touchline demeanour lugubrious. He was a Chilean technocrat and steady builder with a taste for stylish, Spanish football.

City’s best performance of the season – the brutal demolition of Manchester United at the Etihad – spoke of a great leap forward. But this visit to Chelsea pointed to an unsustainable weakness between the posts; a vulnerability that will spread doubt and trepidation along the back four.

This was the second time Hart has rushed into no-man’s land. At Villa Park he came flying out to meet a long hoik from his opposite number and seemed to run right past the danger zone. The coup de grace was applied by Andreas Weimann, the Villa striker.

Prior to that damaging defeat, Hart had been shaky under two corners at Cardiff. He was also beaten by a James Morrison shot for Scotland against England. In the Champions League fixture against the holders, Bayern, his hands seemed too weak to resist shots by Ribery and Robben, and he appeared oblivious to the location of his near post.

Costel Pantilimon and Richard Wright are the other keepers on City’s books. Neither offers an instant solution to Hart’s loss of authority. The days when Mark Hughes, the former City manager, was under pressure from the club’s owners to bid for a world-elite keeper such as Gianluigi Buffon now feel fresh again in the memory.

City fans will care less about the implications for England at next summer’s World Cup than their own club’s chances of turning some wonderful raw material into a title winning team, with a goalkeeper who undermines rather than enhances the solidity of the defence.

Michael Owen, the former England striker and now Daily Telegraph columnist, tweeted: “He only needs to stand on his 6-yard box and Nastasic nods it back to him.”

Hart’s dash – his attempt to do a centre-back’s job instead of his own – suggested a mix of over-eagerness, anxiety and fear of the consequences if the danger was not smothered.

He did the wrong thing because he was trying to do the right thing. Any player in this shadowland of uncertainty deserves our sympathy because it can be ruinous to talent.

City have a lot to ruin. A lot of talent, a lot of promise. In the first 20 minutes there were glimpses of the power at Pellegrini’s disposal.

Fernandinho and Javi Garcia formed a strong shield in front of the centre-halves, Nastasic and Martin Demichelis, who is standing in for Vincent Kompany. David Silva, Yaya Toure and Samir Nasri supported the lone striker, Sergio Aguero, who launched a rocket of an equaliser from his left foot.

On the City bench stewed Alvaro Negredo, Edin Dzeko and Jesus Navas. Stevan Jovetic will also contribute as the season progresses. On paper – where titles are never won, admittedly – City possess the league’s strongest squad.

Yet, with Mourinho in charge, Chelsea are the better bet at this stage to ride an open top bus in May. Mourinho’s tactical and psychological adjustments are likely to make them stronger with every fixture. Nor is Petr Cech, the Chelsea keeper, haunted by any of the demons now swarming through Hart’s brain.

City have now lost a third of their nine games and have dropped to seventh in the table. Pellegrini will start to feel his own reputation is being undermined by his goalkeeper’s fragility.

No manager can afford to tie his own future to a custodian who has so obviously lost his way. The old method would have been a spell on the sidelines to reflect.

But City’s resources are hardly plentiful. Spoilt for choice elsewhere in the squad, City have not recruited well in the positions below Hart.

Pellegrini is urbane no more. “I do it with the players, not with the press,” he chafed, when asked about the inevitable Hart inquest.

Self-preservation will require him to be ruthless. And Hart faces his own dark night of the spirit to work out what is going wrong, and why.