MANCHESTER CITY 1 SUNDERLAND 0: ON THE day Robinho swapped Madrid for Manchester, Pele suggested that what he required was not a change of club but a psychiatrist. If you can judge a footballer's mental state by his performances on the pitch, then the Premier League's most expensive footballer is a mess.
Sunderland were already down to 10 men when, in the 18th minute, Steed Malbranque upended the afternoon’s outstanding performer, Micah Richards. As the cliche goes, you can pluck a Brazilian off any street from Belo Horizonte to Sao Paulo, put a ball at their feet and see them score from 12 yards. But not the one whose transfer fee of €34 million means he will always be judged by the most unforgiving standards.
There have been no goals since December and yesterday he jogged up to take the penalty and stopped momentarily for Marlon Fulop to commit himself. The goalkeeper, however, stood his ground and Robinho virtually passed the ball into his arms.
In the context of a game that saw Manchester City labour to their seventh successive victory at Eastlands, Robinho’s miss was not decisive. However, it presented more ammunition to those who believe he will not remain in Manchester beyond the summer.
Not so long ago, confidence had visibly drained from Richards. The central defensive partnership with Richard Dunne was not working, his fitness was questionable and so was his self-belief. His manager, Mark Hughes, responded by returning him to right-back and from the moment Sunderland saw their left-back, George McCartney, dismissed, Richards exploited a freedom to make some driving, muscular runs.
His first won the penalty but there were others that inflicted almost as much damage on an overstretched Sunderland defence, which, although succumbing to an eighth successive defeat to Manchester City, showed rather more resilience than might have been expected.
In one beautifully constructed move, he pulled the ball back for Elano, who skipped past his marker but steered his shot a few desperate inches wide. Moments later, Elano, whose commitment to Manchester City once seemed as clouded as Robinho’s, forced a wonderful save from Fulop.
Richards’s goal, however, was rather more straightforward – an Elano free-kick that found Anton Ferdinand the wrong side of the man he was supposedly marking. It was a free header and, although Robinho tried to bundle it over the line, it was already a goal before he made contact.
“Everyone seems to forget he is very young,” Hughes said of Richards. “He has not been allowed to shine brightly this season and there was perhaps a need to take him out of the firing line. His form, along with others, has fluctuated and I have not been able to give him the rest he possibly needed.”
Crawling along just above the relegation zone, Sunderland hoped to exploit any latent weariness in a City side that returned from its penalty shoot-out victory over Aalborg in the small hours of Friday morning.
In fact, the home side, led by Shaun Wright-Phillips, began at a high tempo, one that Sunderland were unable to match, and 14 minutes into the game, Wright-Phillips burst through and had his shirt pulled by McCartney on the edge of the area.
After a long consultation with his assistant, the referee, Steve Tanner, decided the Ulsterman had denied Wright-Phillips a clear goalscoring opportunity and showed him a straight red card.
Guardian Service
