Spat spells bad news for more than Mario

The Manchester City futures of Mario Balotelli and, to a lesser extent, manager Roberto Mancini were again thrown into doubt yesterday as the pair became involved in yet another training-ground bust-up at the club’s Carrington base.

The incident, which is only the latest in a fractious relationship that has escalated into physical confrontation before, was sparked by a mistimed tackle from the player on team-mate Scott Sinclair.

Although witnesses said the challenge was not especially malicious, a surprisingly furious Mancini — who was also participating in the game — immediately sought to confront Balotelli with the two ultimately having to be separated. The forward eventually left the training field and departed the grounds 10 minutes later.

Manchester City declined to give an official comment last night, but Mancini will have no choice but to answer questions on the incident today at his customary Friday press conference, ahead of Saturday’s FA Cup match against Watford.

But, as a number of club sources state that the incident is no more than “a storm in a teacup”, there have been suggestions Mancini will seek to downplay it today as the kind of inevitable flashpoint that occurs in such a testosterone-fuelled game.

Certainly, this is not the first time such an incident has happened at a high-profile club. Brian Clough was prone to punching his own players while Alex Ferguson got into highly-charged confrontations with both Peter Schmeichel and Paul Ince.

The key difference, of course, is that none of these flashpoints were captured on camera and only came to light later. In fact, City are understood to feel one of the main issues arising from the latest incident is how exposed their current training ground is.

Of course, as much as City figures attempt to make out that these flashpoints are routine, there is still the fact Balotelli is involved in an uncommon amount of them: not least with Vincent Kompany, Micah Richards and Aleksandar Kolarov.

Club frustration with him was growing even before this incident, and he has not played a minute since a poor performance in the Manchester derby at the start of December — although that is partly down to a virus. There is a certain feeling, however, that he is still worth persisting with due to an under-appreciated composure in big games and moments. It was Balotelli who kept cool to provide the pass for Sergio Aguero to win the league, before offering one of the finest individual performances of Euro 2012 as he scored twice in the semi-finals against Germany.

Stoke boss Tony Pulis has defended Mancini and argued this is the manner of man-management that he feels Balotelli requires in order to perform.

At the same time, though, that in itself may point to another problem. There have been suggestions that the City manager isn’t handling pressure as well this year himself, and that he isn’t quite as focused as last season. Certainly, the nature of his response to the challenge seemed extreme.

Given some of the speculation around City’s hierarchy and plays for Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho, the incident may end up as damaging for the manager as Balotelli.