Manchester City fear £40m-rated Carlos Tevez will want summer transfer

Posted Saturday, April 23, 2011 by theguardian.com

• Striker still has grievances with manager Roberto Mancini
• Loss of top scorer to Inter would hit title hopes next season

Manchester City fear £40m-rated Carlos Tevez will want summer transfer
Manchester City's top scorer Carlos Tevez could be ready to leave the club in the summer.

Manchester City are increasingly convinced that Carlos Tevez will try to resurrect a transfer away from the club this summer, in part because of the difficulties in his relationship with Roberto Mancini.

Tevez is being prominently linked with a £40m move to Internazionale and there is a begrudging acceptance at Eastlands, both at boardroom level and among the management, that the club captain is giving serious consideration to leaving.

Mancini evaded the issue when he was asked at his press conference on Thursday whether the injured 26-year-old may have played his last game for the club. Since then, however, the Italian's associates have confirmed he fears the worst, and that he is not alone at City when it comes to feeling uneasy about the Argentinian's strategy for the next few months.

The Guardian has also established that Tevez has several grievances with Mancini despite making a great show of praising the manager when he withdrew his transfer request last December. The pair have had an occasionally volatile relationship even though Mancini made the Argentinian his captain at the start of the season in a deliberate attempt to pacify him.

Tevez also believes there are several unresolved issues from December, when he feels he was treated badly by the club. One of his points at the time was that he felt a move to Spain or Italy would enable him to see more of his daughters, Florencia and Katia, now he is separated from their mother, Vanessa. That remains the case.

Inter would be one of the few clubs with the financial power to arrange a possible deal, particularly if they sell Wesley Sneijder, but the Tevez camp have told this newspaper that reports in Italy of him verbally agreeing a five-year contract to move to San Siro are "categorically untrue".

Tevez has been staying in Milan, with City's permission, for treatment on the hamstring injury that is threatening to ruin his chances of playing in the FA Cup final. His girlfriend, an actress, is also currently working in the city. Tevez is being treated by the Argentinian team doctor at the hotel where Inter's players and staff stay before matches, the explanation being that the same doctor is also treating Walter Samuel.

City's stance is that they will not address the matter until the end of the season but that it will be their decision, not Tevez's, citing what happened when he submitted his transfer request in December. Khaldoon Al Mubarak, the club's chairman, became personally involved, flying from Abu Dhabi to Manchester to tell the striker that he was under contract and would not be allowed to leave midway through the season. Even then, however, City were privately admitting they were not confident enough to be certain the player and his representatives saw it as more than a short-term agreement.

What is not clear is whether City have the appetite to dissuade him once again. Tevez has a nomadic track record, with five different employers in 10 years, and his position at City is complicated by the difficult relationship between the club and the player's adviser, Kia Joorabchian.

Garry Cook, City's chief executive, was once a close ally of the man at the centre of Tevez's business dealings, but that disintegrated last year to the point where they were communicating only via email. Tevez released a statement at the time saying his relationship with the club's executives had "broken down and is beyond repair". City's feelings were laid bare in their own statement, saying they were "disappointed by this situation and particularly the actions of Carlos's representative". Joorabchian, however, has always strongly denied that he tried to influence Tevez to leave the club.

Tevez's form has dipped over the last couple of months and he recently went his longest run of games without scoring. Yet it speaks volumes for his record at City that it was only an eight-match sequence. Tevez has been one of the more prolific strikers in the Premier League and, if he were to leave, it would represent a major loss to the team's hopes of mounting an authentic title challenge next season. He is City's leading scorer, with 22 goals, and has scored 51 times in 82 games.

City's other options in attack are limited, with Edin Dzeko struggling to adapt to life in England since his £27m move from Wolfsburg in January. Mancini believes Mario Balotelli can have a more productive second season but does not want Emmanuel Adebayor or Craig Bellamy to return from loan spells with Real Madrid and Cardiff City, while the Brazilian Jô is expected to leave.