According to the coaches he has
worked with, Carlos Tevez has never been the greatest lover of training
grounds.
On Thursday— on his return to
Manchester City — things will get a whole lot worse for the club’s former
captain.
It may be
only five months since Tevez finished the last Barclays Premier League season
as City’s top scorer with 24 goals in all competitions. And it may be less than
half a year since he helped them into the Champions League places.
But as City manager Roberto Mancini begins the process of preparing his squad for crucial games in the league and in Europe, Tevez will be told to train alone.
Having served a two-week club
suspension in the wake of an explosive night in Munich, Tevez will find the
gates of the City training ground open to him again. That, however, is as far
as the welcome will go.
Tevez will
find, perhaps to his surprise, that he no longer has a seat in the first-team
changing room and he certainly has no place on the field.
He will be sent out to train with
a specially designated member of Mancini’s fitness team. Only after his state
of mind and fitness has been assessed will the Argentine be considered ready to
work with the reserve team.
As Mancini
sat on the plane home from Munich two weeks ago, he spoke fervently to his
staff of how there would be no way back for Tevez.
Whatever happened to other players in terms of form and fitness, his publicly declared intention to banish the player from his team would hold firm.
On
Thursday, at the club’s training ground, Tevez will discover that this remains
very much the case.
Mancini
was told by the City hierarchy on Wednesday that the decision on how to deal
with Tevez on a day-to-day basis would be left up to him.
If he
wanted to include him in his first-team plans until his future was determined
one way or the other then that, he was told, would be a decision the club would
respect.
Mancini,
though, never contemplated it for a second. The Italian, once a bit of a loose
cannon himself, knows how a disaffected player can spread unrest through a
group of footballers and this is a risk he is not prepared to take.
While Tevez’s future is thrashed out by City’s own disciplinary procedure in the coming days, the player will be told to work to a specifically designed training programme put together to reflect the poor state of fitness Mancini believes him to have carried in recent weeks.
As such,
he will not even always be told to report to Carrington at the same time as the
first-team players he so recently used to lead.
When deciding in the aftermath of
the defeat by Bayern Munich two weeks ago that he would take Tevez on, this is
the scenario Mancini envisaged. It is not ideal.
Saturday’s game at home to Aston
Villa and then a Champions League meeting with Villarreal next Tuesday are
important games that will be played against a backdrop of something approaching
soap opera.
As for Tevez, he never really
liked this city. He does not like the food and does not like the weather. On
Thursday it is expected to rain. Again.
Welcome
back to Manchester
source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk, www.bet365.com, www.teamtalk.com
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