Mark Hughes is toying with the notion of dropping Carlos Tevez from his Manchester City team to face Liverpool tomorrow even though the player left Manchester United in the summer because he was convinced he would get more games with their neighbours.

Hughes, who has been described as "wrestling with the idea," will not tell his players the team until a couple of hours before the kick-off, but the City manager has been concentrating training this week on an attack spearheaded by Emmanuel Adebayor, with Craig Bellamy coming in from the left and Shaun Wright-Phillips from the right.

City's coaching staff have also worked extensively on how to defend a lead in the final minutes of a game, having surrendered winning positions against Fulham and Burnley in their last two home games.

However, Hughes is not planning to make any changes to his defence and it is in attack where he is contemplating taking a calculated gamble, possibly at the expense of Tevez. On the one hand, Hughes wants to play an adventurous line-up against a side that has looked unusually vulnerable this season but, on the other, he is concerned that City might be too open if Tevez and Adebayor both start – and, of the two, Adebayor is regarded as being more troublesome to Liverpool's defence.

Tevez was notorious for reacting badly when he was left out of United's team last season, particularly for the bigger matches, but it has also become apparent that Hughes does not regard him as a mandatory first-team pick, with several discussions among the management team about how to take on Rafael Benitez's team.

Tevez has scored four goals and made four assists in 14 appearances since City bought him for a fee of around £25.5m and has quickly become a popular figure for the club's supporters. He has not scored in the league, though, since getting two goals in the 3-1 defeat of West Ham United on 28 September.