Manchester City have plenty of know-how when it comes to winning titles Then you look at the management and coaching staff: packed full of title-winning know-how. That should assuage some of the dread. The man at the helm is not sailing in uncharted waters. Roberto Mancini won Serie A twice as a player and as a manager took Inter to three titles. It was the way in which he won the third of those, in 2008, that will be most valuable to Mancini today. Inter had led Roma by 11 points but had let that advantage dwindle as the season drew to a close. On the final day they had just a one point advantage over their rivals and needed to go to Parma, who were threatened by relegation, and win. Having conquered their nerves and dealt with the pressure, Inter won 2-0. Mancini will have some familiar faces from that day with him at the Etihad this afternoon. His trusted lieutenant, Fausto Salsano, will be a sounding board and a calming influence while Patrick Vieira, who started in central midfield against Parma, will have been a valuable presence this week (amusingly a 17-year-old Mario Balotelli also started that game). This is exactly the kind of situation in which Vieira is invaluable to City. One of his tasks in his executive role is to liaise with the players and having won three Premier League titles with Arsenal, four with Inter and experienced last-day despair with Arsenal in 1999, he can offer guidance drawn from experience. Mancini's other valued ally is Brian Kidd. As Ferguson's assistant he helped United to four Premier League titles and, like Vieira, Kidd has known last-day pain, losing the title to Blackburn at the end of the 1994-95 season. There will of course be nerves in the dressing room. For key players like Gareth Barry, Joe Hart, Joleon Lescott, Sergio Agüero, David Silva and Samir Nasri this would be their first league title. They can, however, take reassurance from the fact that 11 of their team-mates have been in this situation before. It is ironic that one of the key City players this afternoon will be Carlos Tévez, the player whose absence for much of this season impeded City's progress. He was signed (by Hughes, like a fair few of this City team) because his talent was allied to a track record: a title in Argentina, a title in Brazil and two with United. With QPR expected to be hard to break down, Tévez's ability to link up with Agüero and Silva will be key. Kolo Toure and Gael Clichy have also won the Premier League title while Yaya Toure has won La Liga twice. David Pizarro and Balotelli have won Serie A (under Mancini) and Edin Dzeko has won the Bundesliga. Vincent Kompany and Nigel de Jong have won the league in their own countries with Anderlecht and PSV and Stefan Savic has won the league in Serbia. So City are not quite as ingenuous as they are sometimes portrayed. That is not to say this game will not be challenging. Leave aside the complication of Hughes facing his former club, QPR are desperate not to go down and will fight with all they have. City will have to hold their nerve, even if they struggle to find the breakthrough. They did so admirably against Newcastle last week but here the stakes will be even higher, especially if United take an early lead against Sunderland. City have to try to play through the tension, not let their game cramp up. Mancini must try to be calm and encouraging. All that matters is getting over the line. As he knows from his experience with Inter, the winning of a title can be the threshold to greater things. "I won it with Inter after 20 years," he said. We started to win. We began with the Italian Cup then we continued for the next four years - seven trophies. And after that Mourinho carried it on. When you start to win it becomes - not easy - but the players start to understand that if they work hard they can improve their mentality, they can continue to win. If we win they'll have changed history here. There will be a part of history in English football for this club.