City forward line shaping up as Santa Cruz, Tevez (it seems) come aboard

By: Thad | June 20th, 2009

The cliche used to be that every player in the world wants to play for Manchester United. Well, I’m sure a lot of them do, but Carlos Tevez is not one of them.

The industrious Argentine’s departure for greener pastures–presumably pastures in which he will be valued as an automatic first team choice–has been officially confirmed. City are widely reported to be in the lead for Tevez’s signature.

A transfer fee has also been agreed at last to bring in Roque Santa Cruz from Blackburn. That deal should be confirmed early this week, pending a medical.

If and when both deals go through, City will have a pan-South American forward line, presumably consisting of Robinho on the left wing, RSC in the middle, and Tevez on the right. Craig Bellamy likely will have to settle for a place on the bench when all are fit.

The tricky, challenging part for Mark Hughes will be organizing the midfield behind the front three. One aggressive approach would be to play Gareth Barry as a holding midfielder with Stephen Ireland and SWP in more advanced positions; a more cautious approach might see Barry paired with De Jong as holding midfielders and Ireland going forward, leaving SWP on the bench or to compete for a forward role.

Personally I’d like to see City employ an attack-minded formation; having SWP and potentially Tevez on the same side of the field is an exciting prospect, and will make it more difficult to close Robinho out of the game on the other side. Anyway you slice it, however, Hughes is going to have to leave a quality player on the bench. The last City manager to accumulate this quantity of good players–Kevin Keegan, who went on what was then regarded a prodigious shopping spree prior to the 2003-04 season–was justly criticized for inconsistent and incoherent tactics and team selection that season. Hughes will need to do much, much better than that.

City fans will be delighted if Tevez comes aboard, but there are a few more doubts about Santa Cruz; some think City have overpaid a bit for a recently injured player whose career scoring record isn’t that impressive simply because he is a personal favourite of Hughes. We’ll find out soon enough whether Hughes likes RSC for good reason. Of course, RSC’s position as a first choice isn’t firmly confirmed either, with City still being linked with Samuel Eto’o.

For City to be the club that is “driving the transfer market” still takes some getting used to. It was just 2 1/2 years ago that City fans were delighted to have signed Emile Mpenza on a free transfer to bolster the forward line. (A shrewd move by Stuart Pearce, who’s doing his reputation no harm at the moment with the England under-21s.) Tevez signing for City, if it happens, would be not only a reminder that those days are long gone but a giant step forward in legitimating the club as a favoured destination for world class players.