Chewed up by poppy PR machine

Carlos Tevez’s first column for the Sun on Sunday was a scream.

Much of it was devoted to an attack on “sock-sucker” and man on the make, Gary Neville. Tevez also attacked Graeme Souness, which seemed bizarre until you remembered that last year, Souness called Tevez “a disgrace...one bad apple... what the man in the street thinks is wrong with modern football” after his famous falling-out with Roberto Mancini in Munich.

One former professional at the Etihad Stadium wondered if Souness now regretted speaking so harshly about Tevez since it later emerged he had simply refused to warm up again rather than refused to play full stop. As a general rule, it’s unwise to rush to judgement on the basis of TV evidence, because the information you have, though it looks conclusive, is just a sliver of the reality.