Jekyll and Hyde routine

Manchester C 1 Bolton Wanderers 0:WHEN IT comes to Carlos Tevez the good almost always outweighs the bad, although sometimes it must feel like a close-run thing for Roberto Mancini.

Tevez has the most goals, the highest number of shots on and off target and more man-of-the-match awards than anyone else at Manchester City.

Fouls, offsides and yellow cards? That’s Tevez, too – not forgetting edging above Emmanuel Adebayor when it comes to having the most arguments with the manager. The latest contretemps came when he remonstrated with Mancini after being substituted a minute from the end of a game in which the striker’s fifth booking of the season means he will miss the trip to West Ham United next Saturday.

Two derive from dissent, another from an excessive goal celebration.

Mancini was unimpressed.

“He must pay attention to this or we are going to be without him a lot of times,” he said. “One is okay, no more.”

Yet, Mancini had no complaints when he was asked about Tevez’s outburst on the touchline. No, he replied, he wanted his players to be disappointed if they were replaced and he wished everyone was the same. “I’m happy. I prefer a situation when important players don’t want to leave the pitch.”

Mancini missed the point, namely that a player can be unhappy without feeling the need to give his manager abuse.

“Seeing Tevez’s reaction to being subbed assures me there are problems within at City,” Kevin Davies, the Bolton forward, said. “Great players individually, but as a team? There seem to be problems there; they do not even seem to celebrate goals together.”

Mario Balotelli and Tevez, together with David Silva and Yaya Toure, menaced Bolton’s defenders, but City’s inability to add to Tevez’s fourth-minute effort is becoming a common theme, no other team in the Premier League having scored fewer home goals.

“As much as we were not at our maximum, we were always in the game and could have nicked a point,” Owen Coyle, the Bolton manager, said.