Manchester City lay down title challenge to United with win over Liverpool as Roberto Mancini's side bounce back City will lose Yaya Toure, scorer of the second goal last night which capped an impressive performance, and his elder brother Kolo to the African Nations Cup after this weekend's FA Cup tie against United. The former's absence will leave a big hole in their midfield but Mancini believes if they can overcome that and maintain top spot they will be in pole position in the race for the Premier League crown. "This month without Yaya or Kolo when we play every three days that will be hard," said the Mancini. January is a very crucial month for us because if we can stay on the top after January we have a big chance to win (the league),  Liverpool played their part in an entertaining match but without Luis Suarez, who began his eight match ban for using racially abusive language towards Patrice Evra, their familiar frailties in front of goal reared their head again. For City, the win was the perfect response to dropped points against West Brom and the last gasp defeat to Sunderland earlier this week. This is massive for us. We were incredibly efficient and it's a great win," City captain Vincent Kompany said. It is one of the top six teams out of the way and now we know United and the other teams have to play each other. Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish was unhappy with elements of the performance but did not think his side deserved to be 3-0 losers. "I am not so sure the scoreline reflects the way the game went," said the Scot. I am not saying we deserved to win but the lesson we learned tonight was if we are not clinical we are going to suffer. There are a lot of things that happened tonight which we can correct by ourselves and we have to go and do that. We had a great opportunity to open the scoring (through Stewart Downing). We conceded the first goal after we lost possession. The second was a corner which we'd had a warning seconds before it and the third was when they were down to 10 men and Toure has run the length of the field and won a penalty. It is a harsh lesson but we will learn from it.