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Carlos Tevez is Very Good, Robinho is Unbelievably Bad

// December 27th, 2009 // Uncategorized

Very interesting debut for Roberto Manciti today.  First, he continued the tradition than he began an Inter Milan of wearing a team scarf, tied with the perfect knot.  (I mean, really — if managing doesn’t work out he definitely has a career as a professional scarf instructor.)

Manciti correctly removed the unplayable Micah Richards from the starting lineup for Pablo Zabaleta, as well as the approaching-unplayable Wayne Bridge for Silvinho, but also left out both Craig Bellamy and Sean Wright-Phillips.  Playing Martin Petrov (a lefty) on the right for Wright-Phillips was a great idea — with Carlos Tevez as the center forward (Adebayor and Santa Cruz were out), you aren’t going to be sending in crosses for headers, so you might as well have someone naturally inclined to cut in from the wing.  Carlos Tevez was wonderful in the false center-forward role — he was involved in every attacking move. 

But Robinho in for Bellamy?  A bit of a head-scratcher.  Admittedly, Mancini did announce he was saving Bellamy for Monday’s (only slightly) tougher game away to Wolves.  You could also see him wanting to make an attempt to reclaimm Robinho, worrying that if he left the Brazilian on the bench in his first game, he might lose him forever.

Well, it appears that argument is moot — Robinho may be long gone already.  I only saw about half of the game yesterday, but he was awful.  I mean, it was almost comical how many bad touches he had — crosses, corners, shots, etc.  Even on the first goal, he is clearly attampting a shot and just shanks it dreadfully (luckily for Citeh, right into the path of Petrov).  And in the lead-up to the second goal he takes two corners, neither of which clear the first defender — just atrocious.

My question is this:  was he playing badly on purpose?  Has he thrown in the towel and is he hoping for a winter transfer?  Perhaps it’s subconscious?  Regardless, the last time I have seen someone play this surprisingly bad was… Ronaldinho.  Not today’s Ronaldinho, who we have all passively accepted is a bad player to the extent that when he makes a decent free kick or pass we all declare that he’s had a great game.  No, I’m referring to the last-year-at-Barcelona Ronaldinho, when he turned in performance after bafflingly bad performance. 

It’s hard to see how Mancini will be able to justify playing Robinho again.  It’s even harder to imagine how this is good for Robinho — you would think he wants to look good for potential suitors and, oh by the way, the World Cup is approaching.  Nobody likes a guy who turns it on and then turns it off and then maybe turns it on again.  (Except for Didier Drogba.)

Posted by Lazar