ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE:MANCHESTER CITY are giving serious consideration to selling Robinho at the end of the season and have hatched a remarkable plan to offer him as bait in a player-plus-cash exchange for the Chelsea captain, John Terry. Robinho joined City seven months ago, but the club have begun to think of him as a problem player and intend to use the Brazilian to try to pull off one of the most remarkable pieces of transfer business in the modern game.
City’s information is that Terry, despite his public statements to the contrary, is not as settled as Chelsea supporters would like to believe. City have the financial power to double his weekly €152,000 salary and their inquiries have convinced them the England captain wants to hear about the plans of the club’s owners in Abu Dhabi.
Terry has been identified as the ideal captain for a club with ambitions to challenge for the Champions League within three years.
The involvement of Robinho, their so called “marquee signing”, will shock City’s supporters, but prominent figures in Abu Dhabi are confident that disappointment will be offset by a planned €225 million recruitment programme in the summer, with David Villa, Yaya Toure, Kolo Toure and Roque Santa Cruz also on the extensive list of targets.
The chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, is aware that Hughes is exasperated with Robinho because of his attitude off the pitch and his perceived lack of effort on it. The matter has been discussed at length in Abu Dhabi and Manchester, and it has been decided that Robinho should leave unless he shows big improvement .
Hughes was impressed with Robinho’s performance during Thursday’s defeat of FC Copenhagen but his relationship with his most talented player has been deteriorating for some time and if City cannot persuade Terry to leave Stamford Bridge the club will explore the possibility of a swap deal involving Franck Ribery, the Bayern Munich player and France international, who could replace Robinho on the left side of attack.
Barcelona’s Thierry Henry is another confirmed target who could play in the same position.
Robinho cost €36.7 million, breaking the British transfer record, when he signed from Real Madrid last September, and is the club’s leading scorer with 12 goals in 27 appearances. The Brazilian is hugely popular with supporters, but his time at City has also been punctuated by a series of disciplinary issues, most notably when he was fined two weeks’ wages for sneaking out of a mid-season training camp in Tenerife to fly to Brazil before his 25th birthday.
Since then, senior figures at Eastlands have begun to question his commitment. Robinho has repeatedly clashed with members of the coaching staff and received numerous warnings for refusing to adhere to City’s dress code.
In the past couple of months some of the senior players have complained to City’s management about the way he tends to disappear for long spells in away games.
One has accused him of “showing a complete lack of effort” and, at a recent team meeting, the players were taken aback when Robinho effectively told them they should do more running on his behalf so that he could score more goals.
It was pointed out to him that he needed to start trying more and that, in the Premier League, teams could not carry “passengers”. Hughes is said to be frustrated by his inability to get through to the player and there is a feeling that Robinho has to shoulder some of the blame for why City, who play at West Ham tomorrow, have taken eight away points all season.
GuardianService
