As if feeling his first serious bout of pressure as Manchester City manager wasn't enough, Roberto Mancini is still living the life of Alan Partridge.
The Italian boss is so unsure of his future at the club that he is yet to buy a permanent residence and move his family over.
Instead, he remains living in self-imposed exile in a hotel. Speculation that he only has a mumbling, semi-comprehensible Carlos Tevez for company is, however, probably wide of the mark.
The Daily Mail quote him saying in an interview in Italy: "If I get an apartment, that means that fourth place is becoming reality. From there, I can really launch the City project."
That reality looked a lot further away after City lost 2-1 at Hull City at the weekend. The Italian boss is only 10 games into his reign at Eastlands but has already lost more games this season than his predecessor Mark Hughes. Two league defeats already, plus elimination from the Carling Cup at the hands of local rivals United, have jeopardised the European place that Mancini was charged with delivering.
He will certainly be feeling the pressure when his team host Bolton Wanderers this evening, and there were already signs of him cracking when his basic mathematical skills escaped him. Mancini said in his pre-match press conference that "when City play against Bolton or Hull or Wolverhampton they play always at 200 per cent," but that in order to deal with that his team "must concentrate at 100 per cent".
Between them City, Tottenham and Aston Villa are all guilty of conspiring to let Liverpool sneak back into fourth place despite their worst campaign in years, but the stakes are higher for Mancini than his counterparts at White Hart Lane and Villa Park.
Mancini, with three Serie A titles to his name, was brought in because he was seen to have the pedigree that Hughes did not, and would to able to satisfy the impatient City board by bringing them Champions League football as soon as possible.
City have two games in hand on each of the five teams above them, but the match against Bolton will be followed by a tough trip to Stoke and then games against Liverpool, Chelsea and Spurs.
It is of course wholly unfair to put Mancini under the microscope after completing less than a dozen games in charge at his new club, but this is the reality of working at City.
Hughes got the boot partly for overseeing a run of seven straight league draws, even though he also presided over wins against Chelsea and Arsenal - back in the days when Arsenal were good.
Speaking of the Gunners glory days, Mancini's hopes could well be rescued by Patrick Vieira, who is set to make his first City start tonight.
Even though he was not a regular for Inter in his final years at the club, he was still making more tackles per game in Serie A than any other player up until the time he left for Manchester.
That brand of midfield steel may have been all well and good for the clogging Trotters of six weeks ago, but how will he fare against the brave new purveyors of pass-and-move that Owen Coyle brings to Eastlands?
A telling fact about the pre-Coyle Bolton is the identity of their top scorer, who they have lost for the rest of the season - centre-back Gary Cahill. He may have lost his key defender, but now perhaps Coyle can show just how his change in style can benefit his new side without relying so much on the big defender's goals. Still, let's hope we at least get to see Vieira and Kevin Davies square up a few times to maintain the quotient of old school Lancashire rough and tumble.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY: "We knew the way Arsenal play. It is always the same style. If you play tactics like we did, you can beat them. This season and the season before they showed they weren't able to win the league. (Wenger) always says things like this when he loses to find an excuse - but football is not possession of the ball and playing a nice pass, football is about winning games and that is what Manchester United showed when they played them and what we did." Chelsea midfielder Michael Ballack sticks the boot into Arsene Wenger after the Arsenal boss had another unbecoming moan about his team being bullied into defeat.
FOREIGN VIEW: Benin have sacked their entire coaching and playing staff following their first-round exit from the African Cup of Nations. The bizarre decision comes after the Squirrels finished third in Group C, behind eventual winners Egypt and semi-finalists Nigeria. It was their joint-highest finish at the tournament, having previously qualified in 2004 and 2008 but failing to earn a point.
COMING UP: There are four matches in the Premier League this evening as a full midweek programme of matches gets underway. Follow live text commentary of Manchester City v Bolton Wanderers, Wigan Athletic v Stoke City, Portsmouth v Sunderland and Fulham v Burnley this evening.
There is also a full complement of Championship matches, plus a smattering of games in League One and League Two.
You can bet on any of those games with Eurosport Bet.