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James Lawton: Sorry, City, but Ferguson's right – Tevez and Adebayor are simply not worth £50m

Saturday 25 July 2009 00:00 BST
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In all the spending and the boasting of Manchester City's charge to the new season a rifle shot of a comment has been heard. Predictably, it came from Sir Alex Ferguson when he declared, "Carlos Tevez is not worth £25m."

Not exactly neighbourly, you might say, nor was it a particularly gracious thank you for all that scampering the Argentine did on his and United's behalf.

Yet surely it was right in its invitation to a more intense examination of the quality of City's huge investments – and this was especially so in the light of yesterday's indication that John Terry would, after all, turn his back on City's Arabian gold.

It was in one way a more critical blow to City's racing ambition than Kaka's decision to reject them last season. Terry has possibly had his best years as a player, but his ability to influence a team, to give it some sense of itself, has long been beyond doubt.

Certainly it has been why City have pushed the Terry issue so far beyond the normal bounds of coveting another club's possession. Their overwhelming need has not been an assortment of talent but a team, an instant one.

Nobody knows this better than the old sniper Ferguson. The barb against Tevez was no doubt a first attempt to undermine the most serious local threat to United since Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison 45 years ago made three signings, each one of them a masterstroke.

Does any of City's recent empire-building begin to touch that status?

Tevez has some fine qualities but the baleful expression he threw with increasing frequency at the Old Trafford terraces, the sense he conveyed that his martyrdom was all but complete, wore desperately thin for the very reason his former manager advanced after being challenged, for roughly the 37th time, over the lack of warmth he had displayed to a servant of such fierce dedication.

But dedication to whom, to the club he wore on his heart or the agenda he carried in his head? The point is that Ferguson saw the value of Tevez but not beyond it. He saw a full heart, perhaps, but not a full talent.

It means that if City did not appear to be so thrilled by their ability to outspend everybody north of Madrid they might be experiencing right now at least a small shiver of concern. The point is redoubled, surely, by the fact that without putting it anywhere near as bluntly, Arsène Wenger is making an identical point about Emmanuel Adebayor.

No doubt Arsenal needed the Adebayor windfall in their current efforts to rationalise their finances but given Wenger's status, the huge, even miraculous, transfer profits he has generated over the years, we might have expected some kind of statement of public displeasure at the loss of a vital talent.

We didn't get one for two reasons. One is that along with his idealism in the matter of how a team should be built and focused, Wenger has a superb track record in the matter of knowing when to hold his cards, and when to fold them. Adebayor, we have to believe on last season's evidence, was considered a foldable card.

The record of Adebayor, his strength and his weakness, is no mystery. He performed brilliantly in the wake of Thierry Henry's departure to Barcelona, scoring a goal of superb timing and opportunism at Old Trafford, and was a key reason why a young Arsenal promised such extraordinary achievement until they imploded around the cruel injury to Eduardo da Silva in the spring before last.

Adebayor from time to time revealed class of an extremely high order but always there was a strain of something else. It was more than a touch of lassitude at the most vital moments. Adebayor complained this week that fans at the Emirates were less than nice to him, that they had driven him away. This was odd from a man who concluded that first impressive season by flickering his eyelids at most of the European game.

The question that must now haunt City manager Mark Hughes, if not Garry Cook – the chief executive who is already launching an official club campaign suggesting 60-odd years of United ascendancy is about to be obliterated – is whether between them Tevez and Adebayor are going to produce anything like value for money at a combined basic cost of £50m.

Certainly the old question about whether you can buy a team rather than shape one has become the most compelling of the new season.

That most scepticism about the City project should be coming from Old Trafford is scarcely a surprise. David Gill, United's chief executive, was bound to advance the case for a balanced budget, however bizarre it might sound on the lips of a chief executive whose club's last published accounts were obliged to mention the £69m servicing of a debt of almost £700m. You might say that this makes the case for the arrival of men in white coats rather than the business suits of financial regulators, but then United's need to operate on a wage bill of 50 per cent of turnover makes it, despite their peculiar circumstances, no less a sane model for all those not supported by money that has fallen from the sky.

United do not have that bonus but then years of meticulous planning and solid investment in young players of outstanding talent are not likely to be swept away in the course of one season. Those who believe this is possible might also take the time for a white-coat fitting. No, Carlos Tevez wasn't worth £25m. He is the most inflated example of a wild idea.

Williams' ban leaves rugby's moral compass spinning wildly

The great All Black Dan Carter's return to rugby in his rural birthplace Southbridge, where the male population is not so great that seven XVs at all ages can be fielded without the help of out-of-towners, is surely a matter of celebration wherever the game is played. Carter is an icon for the young people in the great swathe of farmland running down from Christchurch and can they ever have needed such an inspiration – and example?

You have to think so in the week when the game's slight grasp of any kind of working morality seemed to have loosened still further. This is players' union boss Damien Hopley on the decision to impose a 12-month ban on the Harlequins wing Tom Williams for faking a blood injury by biting into a theatrical effects capsule: "It is an extraordinary decision, excessive and entirely disproportionate."

The point of the ploy was that a goal-kicking team-mate was allowed on to the field after earlier being substituted, a move that would not have been possible but for a "blood" injury to a team-mate. Williams was seen to wink as he left the field. Hopley's argument is fuelled by the fact that Schalk Burger, the Springbok who eye-gouged Lions' wing Luke Fitzgerald, was given a mere eight weeks suspension, while Bath lock Justin Harrison received eight months after admitting to using cocaine in an end-of-season party. The simple fact is that if decency had any more than a faint toehold in the game Carter enhances so brilliantly, Burger would have been banned for at least two years, if not sine die.

Then a year's suspension for cynically making nonsense of the idea that rugby should be free of the most outrageous cheating might not have been taken as quite such an outrage. In the meantime, we can only presume rugby's moral compass remains in the gutter.

Gerrard should reflect on his responsibilities

Steven Gerrard's relief at being found not guilty of affray was palpable – and understandable. He can now put behind him an unsavoury episode that clouded a season in which he played well enough to be voted Footballer of the Year. However, those already concerned about the jury system – and its susceptibility to the celebrity culture – cannot be so sanguine. Although there is no suggestion that he was anything other than not guilty, on the weight of video evidence the England star can consider himself fortunate to have escaped the affair without blemish. At the peak of his career he will do well to reflect deeply on the responsibilities he carries along with so many of his hugely rewarded, and celebrated, co-workers.

Tour scales the heights but cannot claim the high ground

The Tour de France riders who slave up Mont Ventoux today will, halfway up the murderous ascent, pass a small marble plinth in memory of Tommy Simpson, the British rider who in 1967 collapsed and died when his heart gave up. It had been overwhelmed by inhuman effort and amphetamines.

They put up the memorial, funded by British cyclists, 20 years later. The brief ceremony was attended by Simpson's widow Helen and his team-mate Barry Hoban, who married some years after the tragedy. They had to wait in the broiling sunshine on the bare mountainside. The tour bigwigs came 20 minutes late, and were whisked away so quickly they did not have time to discuss the meaning of Simpson's death.

It wasn't true, though, that Simpson's fall went unnoticed entirely in official circles. An inquiry came a year after his death. The following year the Tour started from the home of the mineral water, Vittel, and was christened the Race of Health.

This is a magnificent race, of course, a test of endurance and strength beyond any comparison in sport. Sad, though, that today, no more than in Simpson's time, it cannot be described as the Race of Truth.

No wonder that sad little ceremony was so brief.

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