Why Tevez will quit City.. and Mancini is facing his defining moment

By Martin Lipton in Laptop with Martin Lipton

Published 11:15 16/12/10

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By any normal standards, he's doing quite well.

Two points off the summit, and only a year into the job, all at a club that hasn't won anything since 1976.

Yet rather than revelling in the acclaim, Roberto Mancini suddenly finds himself facing the toughest questions since he came into English football.

Manchester City - the sky blue conundrum.

Mancini's approach to the Carlos Tevez affair may well, in the final analysis, define his stint as the second boss of the Abu Dhabi era at Eastlands.

That the Italian and the Argentine do not get on is pretty clear. After all, Tevez has been doing his best to make it public knowledge - without the aid of self-publicist extraordinaire Kia Joorabchian - for much of the past 12 months.

Moans about time off, gestures of dissent when he is taken off, none of it exactly good for morale.

By handing Tevez the armband at the start of the season, Mancini was making a peace offering, seeking to placate the combustible "Apache", making the first - and often the hardest - step.

Yet Tevez seems strangely oblivious to the stand-out fact - that under Mancini he is playing the best sustained football of his career.

When Tevez and his advisers could not agree a new deal at Manchester United, to the consternation of the vast majority of the Old Trafford fans - remember "Fergie, Fergie, sign him up"? - the argument was simple.

For all his buzzing commitment - he must have been a pain in the backside for every central defender in the Premier League, refusing to give them time on the ball - strikers are judged by the goals they score and Tevez did not score that many.

Had he been prolific, then United would have paid the price - £25million or so, not the £45m that City paid out, plus a truly ridiculous £230,000 per week in wages - and kept him.

Yet since moving across Manchester, prolific is the only word to describe the striker.

Tevez has scored 39 goals in 60 appearances, 33 in 50 in the league and this season, before the weekend win at basement-dwelling West Ham, City had only won one league game in which the captain had not found the target.

In simple terms, for all the other quality players gathered by the Middle East money men, Tevez is the reason they are where they are.

Mancini, whatever his quibbles about the player, knows it too.

That was why his stance when pressed on the big issues, after joining up with his squad in Turn for tonight's Europa League tie with Juventus, was so placatory, but meaningful.

"Carlos is an important player for us," said Mancini. "Sure, he must stay here.

"I think that Carlos is our player. In my opinion, Carlos will stay with us. I think he can continue to play with us, but I want to speak to him.

"He has a three-and-a-half year contract and I expect him to stay here. I hope he continues to score goals for us.

"We can change the history of this club. Together we can do good work this year."

The right thing to say. Understandable. But seemingly doomed to failure.

Joorabchian has made it clear his ambition in life, for the next month or so, is to get Tevez out of Manchester.

Mancini, for his part, must publicly state he is pledged to keep the player. Anything else would reduce the transfer fee City might get.

But without Tevez - and surely, that is the only possible end-game, unless we are to have a repeat of the Wayne Rooney situation, but with only brickbats, not bouquets, landing on player and club alike - City will suddenly lose so much of the threat.

Wolfsburg's Edin Dzeko may have pleaded with City to buy him in the New Year but very few players instantly adapt to a foreign country, even fewer strikers.

And the likes of Jo, outward-bound Emmanuel Adebayor and Mario Balotelli hardly look like they are going to score 15 league goals between them over the second half of the campaign, let alone achieve that tally individually.

Mancini is aware of that reality, equally aware that he has been put in an invidious position, at precisely the time when City should be girding their collective loins to make a real statement of title intent.

The Italian, could, with reason, feel angry and frustrated. At the hierarchy that have allowed the situation to fester, the agent who is stirring, or the player allowing himself to be the spoon.

Now, though, the big question is what Mancini does next. Upon the answer, you would think, lies City's destiny.

Fair? Not at all. But it isn't supposed to be fair. It's about proving you have what it takes to handle the unfairness of it all. It's about Mancini showing everybody what he is truly made of. Something the whole Premier League is keen to know.

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