Tevez causes a stir

The interview that surfaced in yesterdays Mail certainly whipped up a storm as we head into this weekends Manchester derby.

The piece was certainly a revealing and in-depth one covering a whole host of topics, some of which were buried amidst some of the more headline-grabbing comments that were by and large picked up elsewhere on the back of the interview being published.

The three main topics that have been picked up  are Tevez's unhappiness with the poster campaign that signalled his arrival at the club:

‘I never understood the intention of that poster,’ he admits today. ‘What was the point? Tell me. Was it to welcome me to Manchester City, or was it to anger Manchester United? Nobody ever told me.

‘I’m indifferent towards it, but it is important you know I had nothing to do with the poster. I’d have preferred for it not to have been there. I have respect for all the clubs I used to play for. That was not showing respect, was it?’

His backing for Mark Hughes, and that the former manager should have had more time at the club:

‘It is their club, their money,’ he says of the decision makers behind City’s rapid growth. ‘But you ask me if I thought it was the right decision and the answer is “no”.

‘I will play for any manager; I play for the shirt and must respect the right of the people who make decisions to change things, but a team does not form overnight. Mark should have been given more time. The decision was taken with too much haste. Did the directors think it through? You cannot invest so much and then sack the manager after five months! Look, Mark brought us all here. He is a great manager and he will get another big club, 100 per cent.’

And a disquiet over the current training methods deployed by Roberto Mancini (which went nicely with comments made by Rio Ferdinand about Tevez's training 'habits'):

‘The players are not happy with this. We are at the end of a long season, we have big matches, we are tired but there are still double training sessions, morning and afternoon. Then, the next day, we train for two hours. I do not understand. But, please, he is the coach and I am the player. He is in charge. I am OK with him.’

Whilst the quotes themselves made for good copy, reading the article as a whole you do get the impression that the general tone is not a critical one. In fact throughout it, Tevez also discusses his hopes for the clubs future, his respect for Craig Bellamy and the problems he faced earlier in the season with his sick daughter.

Still, given the proximity to the derby - one of the most important for both sides in recent times - the timing is strange, even moreso given James Ducker's comments about the club restricting access to Tevez in the run up to the game, no doubt done with the knowledge that it was certain that any comments - no matter how trivial - would be picked up instantly by the media.