Manuel Pellegrini admitted he's been disappointed by Yaya Toure's play for Manchester City this season.

"I don't think he's happy with his performance this year -- and nor am I," Pellegrini said in a news conference. "But we must support him and return him to his normal performance."

Pellegrini, though, has ruled out giving Toure a break and pointed out that only earlier this season City were accused of being overly reliant on the midfielder.

He said: "Maybe if we play without Yaya when he was at the African Nations Cup and we'd won all the games, then he comes back and we start losing. Maybe then you think that. Yaya needs support. He's a very important player and he will have my support until the end of the season.

"He doesn't need a break. For a lot of reasons he's not the same player he was last season but he continues being a very important player for our team.

"It's very easy when you don't get the results to single out one player but remember in January people said we were [only] one player and it was Yaya. That's when we started with bad results -- it was just because this team was Yaya.

"The only player we had was Yaya and without him we couldn't win -- I don't think it was true. He's not playing well in parts of the game. But in some parts he is playing well and he will continue playing."