Tevez tears Fulham to shreds

THIS was supposed to be the day when Mark Hughes gleefully hammered home the final nail in Roberto Mancini’s coffin and ended his successor’s career at Manchester City.

Instead, the visitors shrugged off all talk of a crisis to produce the kind of performance that you would expect from an investment of over €350m by their Abu Dhabi owners.

It was the perfect end to a difficult day for Mancini, which began with Kolo Toure hitting out at his own team-mates in a newspaper interview, claiming they should be deducted pay for their performances to date.

The only player exempted from criticism was Carlos Tevez, and it was the Argentinian who inspired his side on the banks of the Thames.

Watched by his former national team manager and mentor, Diego Maradona, Tevez was simply far too good for Fulham. He opened the scoring with a calm finish after just six minutes and then, after Pablo Zabaleta and Yaya Toure had virtually made the game safe, twisted the knife with his ninth of the season 10 minutes after half-time.

Zoltan Gera pulled a goal back with a deflected effort with 20 minutes to go, but it was far too little, far too late.

In short, it was the worst possible reunion for Hughes. The Welshman was sacked 11 months ago, and in his first 13 games of last season he had taken 22 points. That was exactly the same total as Mancini’s side had going into this game, but instead of this game being a banana skin it instead turned into a convincing reason as to why City can challenge for the title.

Chelsea’s recent stutter has seen the table bunch together, and City are now only three points off the top.

If Mancini is sacked with his side in that position it would prove that Eastlands is a deathtrap for any manager. The future of the Italian is now no longer Hughes’ concern, of course, but he will be worried at his new side’s stuttering form. Out of the relegation zone on goal difference alone, the memory of last season’s run to the Europa League final under Roy Hodgson already seems a long time ago.

It was a reminder of how recently Hughes was in charge at Eastlands that City started with six players signed by the man in the home dugout, and it was two of them who combined together to devastating effect after just six minutes. Gareth Barry started the move as he picked up a loose ball and played in Tevez, who shrugged off the challenge of Carlos Salcido far too easily before picking his spot past Mark Schwarzer.

City started to dominate proceedings quickly after that early breakthrough, which was their first goal in 250 minutes of football.

Aleksandar Kolarov had already missed a one-on-one by the time that City got what was a deserved second just after the half-hour mark. Fulham were all at sea as Silva’s cross was only half cleared by Damien Duff and returned with interest by Zabaleta, who crashed an unstoppable first-time drive into the top left-hand corner of Schwarzer’s goal.

That was the Argentinian’s first goal for City since January 2009, but it was swiftly followed by one for a man who is paid a huge amount of money to be finding the back of the net rather more regularly than he has done. Depending on what figure you believe, Yaya Toure’s wage is said to be in the region of £250,000 (€290,000) per week, and he has one solitary goal, at Wigan in September, to show for it. When his brother criticised players for not giving value for money, it was hard not to think that Yaya is one of the chief candidates for producing a disappointing return on the club’s investment.

Yet he showed his quality here. In truth his goal was the work of a superb team move, but Toure still had much to do when Tevez slid the ball to him at the end of a mesmerising 24-pass move. He did it superbly, gliding away from Salcido and finding the far corner.

The boos from the home crowd were as half-hearted as their side’s efforts in the opening 45 minutes, but they improved at the start of the second half. The optimism lasted all of 10 minutes, though, as City made the game safe. Tevez had just been denied by Schwarzer, but from the resulting corner Dickson Etuhu’s poor clearance fell for Zabaleta, whose shot was heading straight for the goalkeeper until Tevez flicked it up and over the Australian. It wasn’t conventional, and it didn’t seem that Tevez knew a huge amount about it, but the end result was another goal for the visitors. Gera’s deflected drive brought some cheer to the home fans, but the game was done and dusted long before then.