Tevez ready to step into the void left by Rooney

Boca Juniors once offered to pay for plastic surgery to remove the scars Carlos Tevez received when a pan of boiling water scalded his face as a child. He declined. Last season the Argentina international was held up as both saviour and pariah for his influence on West Ham's remarkable escape from relegation and, this summer, a prodigious career has been on hold due to the third-party controversy that has clouded his time in English football.

Yesterday he was asked whether he felt added pressure to deliver for Manchester United at Fratton Park tomorrow night now that Wayne Rooney is in absentia for two months. You can guess the response. "I have never felt pressure in football. Whenever I go out on to the pitch I just enjoy myself," the 23-year-old said, unveiled with appropriate timing by United as they attempted to put a collective brave face on the loss of their £27m striker.

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If the football field is, like Rooney, a sanctuary for the forward from a rough neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, then it is with understandable relief – and all due respect to his stricken team-mate – that he welcomed confirmation from Sir Alex Ferguson that his United debut has been brought forward from Sunday's Manchester derby.

"It is a big blow to lose him and it will be difficult to replace him, but Manchester United have the squad to cope," Tevez said. "I just want to get into the side first, get to know the players and, hopefully, reproduce what I did last season."

His first press conference as a United player was full of stock football phrases and diplomacy but at least the Argentine did not shy away from the controversies that have plagued his move from West Ham, and which has seen the champions pay £10m for a two-year loan deal to his "economic owner" Kia Joorabchian with an agreement to purchase the forward – for a fixed price – either during that period or at its conclusion.

"It was impossible not to know [about the problems]," Tevez admitted. "I only realised how difficult the situation was during the Copa America, when I thought the move would go through but as each game passed it still wasn't resolved. But I never thought I'd have to stop playing football. In football you have to deal with two sides of the coin. The bad part was trying to sort out the transfer and having to leave West Ham, that was very difficult for me, but the lure of Manchester United was just too much." Ferguson claimed he had no opinion on the pervading problems of third-party ownership.

"I don't have any views on it. I am still trying to digest it all," he said – but David Gill, the United chief executive, insisted it was now up to Fifa, the world governing body, to make the rules regarding such transfers more transparent.

"I wouldn't disagree that the third-party ownership needs clarifying but that needs Fifa to do something," Gill said. "You always learn from your experiences. We have as a club, and I'm sure the Premier League has to."