Record fine facing Tevez

MANCHESTER CITY will inform Carlos Tevez in the next 48 hours that they have ruled he was guilty of refusing to play as a second-half substitute against Bayern Munich and now faces a club-record punishment.

City are trying to convene a disciplinary hearing before the weekend after releasing a short statement last night to announce they had ended their review into a possible case of gross misconduct and that Tevez had “a case to answer of alleged breaches of contract”.

The striker will be told that not one of the players or coaches who have been interviewed as part of the internal investigation have substantiated his claims. On the contrary, every statement has supported Roberto Mancini’s line that the striker refused to enter the play, with City losing 2-0. City also believe there is irrefutable evidence from Tevez’s television interview directly after the match to support the allegation he refused to play.

The club have contacted the players’ union, the Professional Footballers Association, to give it advance notice that they want to invoke a punishment that will need the organisation’s approval. This is likely to take the form of an additional four-week suspension to add to the fortnight Tevez has already served, plus a fine of six weeks’ wages. Tevez’s weekly salary of €286,000 would make it the largest fine a footballer in England has ever received.

Tevez will have the opportunity to appeal, first through an internal hearing with a City board member and then via a panel organised by the Premier League. The striker has indicated that, despite the swell of evidence against him, he stands by his version of events, namely that it was a “misunderstanding” created by “confusion on the bench” and that he intends to take the matter as far as possible.

The potential delays of arranging a Premier League hearing mean it may not be until Christmas that the whole process is finished. In the meantime Tevez has been freed to resume training and will report for duty today under the belief he will be allowed to rejoin the rest of Roberto Mancini’s squad. City will leave it to the manager to decide whether Tevez is isolated or allowed to train with the rest of the team.

Although Mancini would rather ostracise Tevez, this does create potential problems further down the line of Tevez having grounds to claim constructive dismissal or argue that he has been, in effect, convicted and punished before the process has concluded. The animosity between player and manager is unlikely to have been helped, however, by a day of protracted talks in which Tevez’s camp asked for Mancini to retract his allegations and issue an apology. In return Tevez was willing to accept he had refused at one point to warm up.

The first hearing will be chaired by a senior member of the club’s executive leadership team, possibly the football administrator, Brian Marwood, or the acting chief executive, John MacBeath. Tevez will be informed of the club’s findings and that the initial review, conducted by representatives from City’s HR and legal departments, did not accept his explanation.

City’s feedback from the PFA is that the organisation accepts the club’s findings and will take the unusual step of siding against one of its members. It agrees with City a two-week fine is not enough to cover a significant offence but that cancelling Tevez’s contract would be excessive.

The end result raises the possibility of at least two more months of wrangling, with the only certainty that City will try to offload Tevez in January.

Meanwhile, the British government has given English football until the end of February to deliver plans to overhaul the way the game is governed, including a new licensing system for clubs and wholesale reform of the FA board, or face the prospect of legislation forcing it to do so.