Tevez furious with Mancini's negative tactics at Man City

Posted Tuesday, October 05, 2010 by theguardian.com

Tevez furious with Mancini's negative tactics at Man City
Manchester City's Carlos Tevez receives instructions from manager Roberto Mancini after scoring against Newcastle.

Carlos Tevez's volatile relationship with Roberto Mancini has descended into open hostility after a furious row between the Manchester City manager and captain at half-time of Sunday's 2-1 defeat of Newcastle United.

The argument began when Mancini overheard Tevez making a derogatory comment in Spanish and challenged him about it. The argument quick escalated while other team-mates watched in silence as the two men lost their temper. Tevez blamed Mancini for a poor first-half performance, complaining about his tactics and saying the Italian was getting it wrong by being too negative. Tevez has been playing as the lone attacker in a side featuring three holding midfielders and, despite scoring five times, the striker is believed to be increasingly frustrated about the lack of chances coming his way.

Mancini, who has shown an increasingly tough edge this season, saw it as his authority being undermined and responded aggressively, reminding Tevez that he was under orders to follow team instructions and should not be questioning his manager in such a way.

Mancini had installed Tevez as captain at the start of the season, taking the honour away from Kolo Touré in a demonstration of his belief in the Argentinian, but their relationship has never been close and this row ends what has been an uneasy truce between the pair.

They clashed several times last season, most notably over a newspaper interview in which Tevez said Mark Hughes should not have been sacked and criticised Mancini's training methods, accusing him of over-working the players by holding occasional double training sessions. Mancini responded by summoning his player to the office to inform him that he was unhappy about the remarks.

City's win moved them to second in the Premier League table but Mancini's occasionally abrasive style has caused a number of issues behind the scenes. The former Internazionale manager has already moved on Craig Bellamy because he did not like his attitude and, in the past few weeks, he has also had a row with Emmanuel Adebayor as well as berating one of the club's physiotherapists, Jamie Murphy, because of what he perceives to be the slow nature of Aleksandar Kolarov's return from injury.