Pablo and Ade praise Tévez

He may not be a first choice starter any more but he's clearly got friends within the first team. Here is his fellow Argentine Pablo Zabaleta:

"Carlos changed the game when he came on, he played well as soon as he was on and gave us more chances to score. I was happy for him because it's not easy when a player wants to start and always be part of the first eleven. But all players are important in a squad now, and Carlos showed that on Saturday. He was great when he came on and I was pleased for him."

And his fellow big money striker Emmanuel Adebayor:

"Carlos is a striker and maybe people have been asking why he is not scoring a lot of goals," said the big front man. "At the moment he is not getting the chance to find the net every single game, but he is a good player and maybe he will start finding the net on Saturday. When he does, he might just keep scoring. We all know how good he is at the training ground, he always shows his desire and he is a talented player.

"Maybe he just needs a little confidence to start scoring goals."

There's no doubting that Carlos Tévez is a talented footballer with a lot of very good aspects to his game. But there's also no getting past the fact that he hasn't quite done it for City yet. Two EPL goals in nine games isn't a great return on £47million. (Yes he scored against Crystal Palace and Scunthorpe United in the Carling Cup too.) I'd love to see Tévez go on to get twenty goals this year but we are all going to have to realise that it's unlikely. And Mark Hughes has got to figure out whether his impact sub role from last Saturday is the exception or the rule.