Carlos Tevez, the striker whose choice of club has come to symbolise Manchester City's ambitions, is in danger of missing the start of the season because of an injury suffered when he slipped in the shower.
Tevez aggravated a heel problem when he lost his balance trying to get out of the shower and has not been able to play a single minute of City's pre-season programme. He will also miss the club's warm-up game against Rangers in Glasgow tomorrow and the club's manager, Mark Hughes, has appealed for the Argentina head coach, Diego Maradona, not to include him in his squad for a friendly against Russia in Moscow next week.
Hughes says Tevez will be fit for the club's opening league match, at Blackburn Rovers on Saturday week, but the former Manchester United player has not been able to train properly since moving across the city in a £25.5m transfer deal.
The Argentina team doctor has been to Manchester to check on Tevez's condition and Hughes said: "We don't think Carlos should play for his international team. We would prefer him to stay back next week. He hasn't trained all pre-season. He had an injury from his last international and then he banged the same area when he slipped in the shower. He'll be fine for the start of the season, but he's still not able to put his full weight on it.'
Roque Santa Cruz, the £17m recruit from Blackburn Rovers, has also had his pre-season disrupted by a tendinitis problem, although City's extraordinary spending spree does give Hughes ample cover in attack.
Hughes has spent £94m so far on what the manager has described as an "exceptional" summer but not everything has gone City's way. Leeds United revealed today that English football's biggest spenders had tried to sign Fabian Delph before Aston Villa had a £6m bid accepted on Monday.
City lodged an offer of the same amount on Saturday but, according to the Leeds chairman, Ken Bates, the club's English-based hierarchy then had to get ratification from their owners in Abu Dhabi and asked for the talks to be shelved for a week.
"We had accepted an offer from Manchester City on Saturday which they had to go back with to the owner in the Gulf," Bates said. "Then apparently they needed a week to think about it which surprised us, considering the size of the deal.
"The problem was they might have come back and said 'No' and that wouldn't have been fair to Delph, wouldn't have been fair to Aston Villa and would have eaten into our season. We went back to Villa and it's a good decision for Leeds and the player."
