Ajax 3 Manchester City 1:IF GROUP D is this season's Group of Death then Manchester City have just moved ominously close to having their toes tagged for the morgue. A team cannot hope to make an impact on the Champions League with this form of carelessness and, perhaps most dispiritingly for a club of their ambitions, they are threatening to go out of the competition with a certain amount of ignominy attached.

Three games in, the Premier League champions have only a solitary point to show for their efforts after a night when they took the lead then capitulated, and on which their manager, Roberto Mancini, tried three different formations.

Samir Nasri’s goal briefly offered hope 22 minutes into the first half but what followed affirmed the sense City have not yet developed an understanding of what is required in Europe. They have seldom looked so vulnerable in the Mancini era and, from here, it is going to need an extraordinary feat of escapology to save themselves. City’s next assignment is also against Frank de Boer’s team followed by the considerable challenge of Real Madrid and then a trip to Germany to face the Borussia Dortmund team that made Mancini’s men look so ordinary at the Etihad Stadium three weeks ago. If they are still in contention when it comes to that final game at the Westfalenstadion, it should probably be regarded as a victory of sorts.

City are still guilty too often of making life unnecessarily hard for themselves. The defending for Ajax’s second goal, coming straight from a corner, will have aggrieved Mancini, although it was not particularly refined for Siem de Jong’s equaliser either.

As for his tactics, City’s manager pretty much accepted he had got it wrong from the moment he abandoned his 4-2-3-1 system early in the first half, and decided to reconfigure the side. Certainly it was unusual to see a manager make so many changes and, in particular, at such a juncture. All that preparation and not even a quarter of the game had elapsed before he decided he was not happy with what he was seeing.

Sergio Aguero moved into a more orthodox central position after starting on the left wing. Yaya Toure switched to a more deep-lying midfield role, James Milner was moved to the right wing and Nasri swapped sides to take over from Aguero on the left. Barring the defence, the only players who stayed where they started were Gareth Barry and Edin Dzeko.

The switches had some success because it was from his new position that Nasri scored the goal that soothed City’s nerves and subdued the Ajax crowd. Micah Richards, starting his first Champions League tie in 13 months, began the move with an expertly weighted pass to Milner, who held off Niklas Moisander on the edge of the penalty area and realised Nasri was coming in from the flank. The marking was generous in the extreme and Nasri did the rest, moving on to the ball and applying the right amount of curl to bend his shot into the opposite corner.

The goal had a clear effect on the home side’s confidence and Mancini is entitled to be galled by City’s inability to get through stoppage time at the end of the first half. De Jong started the move, spreading the ball to the right flank for the full-back, Ricardo van Rhijn, to put in the cross. Barry’s attempt to intercept the cross was unimpressive but there were other defenders in close proximity, too. The ball ran across the penalty area for De Jong to lash a first-time shot past Joe Hart.

The second goal was even worse from a City viewpoint. Christian Eriksen swung in a corner from the right and Moisander outjumped Joleon Lescott to divert the ball inside an unguarded far post. It terribly poor defending.

Within six minutes Mancini had replaced Lescott with Aleksandar Kolarov and switched to a three-man defence. But City continued to be susceptible. After 68 minutes, Barry lost the ball to Lasse Schone. Vincent Kompany was left flat-footed as he came out to block Eriksen, who made the angle to shoot and was helped by a deflection off Gael Clichy.

AJAX AMSTERDAM: Vermeer, Van Rhijn, Alderweireld, Moisander, Blind, Schone (Boerrigter 89), Poulsen, Eriksen, Sana (Enoh 74), De Jong, Babel. Subs not used: Cillessen, Sulejmani, Veltman, Dijks, Fischer. Booked: Blind.

MANCHESTER CITY: Hart, Richards, Kompany, Lescott (Kolarov 63), Clichy, Toure, Barry (Tevez 71), Milner (Balotelli 77), Aguero, Nasri, Dzeko. Subs not used: Pantilimon, Sinclair, Nastasic, Evans. Booked: Kolarov, Toure.

Referee: Svein Oddvar Moen (Norway).