Casualties on both sides in friendly fire

WHEN people said that, sooner or later, Roberto Mancini would have to get to grips with Mario Balotelli, I’m sure this isn’t quite what they had in mind.

Not the least amazing aspect of these astonishing images out of Carrington is that, on the face of it, it appears to be the manager not the player who has completely lost the plot.

Even at his most animated on the touchline, Mancini invariably retains a studied Italian cool, hair immaculately swept back, supporters’ scarf knotted just so.

But in the pictures from yesterday he looks, as they say, like a hedge dragged through a man backwards: startling evidence, one is obliged to conclude, of what trying to solve a problem like Mario can do to a man.

By contrast, it’s Looper Mario who looks a model of cool composure, the one exercising iron self-restraint in the face of his gaffer’s wild-eyed provocation.

However, if we are to believe initial eye-witness reports, the real provocation had come in the form of a reckless training ground challenge by Balotelli on his team-mate Scott Sinclair, the kind of senseless friendly fire incident that would be sure to drive any manager to distraction. But, in the case of Mancini and Balotelli, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that this was really something more like a final straw moment for the manager, the violent boiling over of a frustration which has been simmering for as long as the City boss has had to put up with the player’s tantrums and transgressions.

And this despite the fact that Mancini had only recently declared his “love” for Mario and announced that he wasn’t for sale, though he was also at pains to stress that, as the player’s part of the bargain, Balotelli would have to exhibit “seriousness and commitment in training, a more stable private life and correct behaviour on the pitch.”

Perhaps more tellingly, in the same interview Mancini revealed that the club’s owner Sheikh Mansour “likes Balotelli because he recognises the talent and he exports the name of City all over the world. We need to consider that Mario was made as a major investment and this is not a club which throws its capital through the window.”

Said Mancini — before apparently trying to hurl him out of the training ground.

Oh, dear, dear, dear.

The troubled soul in Balotelli will always invite sympathy but the soul who causes trouble is increasingly tiresome and the one making the lurid headlines once again. In most other clubs he would long-since have been given his marching orders, and it may well be that this latest drama will indeed mark his point of departure from the Etihad.

Except this is Manchester City, a football club where they do things differently. If Carlos Tevez can come back after staging a sit-down protest, then maybe even Mario can yet survive his own version of stand up and fight.

Above all else, it’s hard to escape the feeling that even if Roberto Mancini does win this battle, sooner rather than later he is destined to lose the war at Man City. The long-term value of last season’s dramatic Premier League triumph has already been eroded by this season’s ignominious exit from the Champions’ League, and with Manchester United once more holding the whip hand in the domestic stakes, the pressure was steadily ramping up on Mancini.

And I’ve no doubt too that Sheikh Mansour will be only one among very many observers who will look at the pictorial evidence and think: no way could you even imagine Alex Ferguson appearing in shots like these.