On paper Manchester City are as good as any team in England. Slowly they are becoming a very good side. But their progression has been slower than Chelsea’s. Sheikh Mansour has now been in charge for two years at Manchester City. But, two years after Roman Abramovich’s takeover Chelsea won the Premier League. I am not here to argue over the exact reasons for this, I simply want to make the point that Roberto Mancini’s decision to make Carlos Tevez captain has made his job even harder.

One of the biggest problems Mancini faced when he took the job at Manchester City, was to create team unity. From City’s current starting XI, only Joe Hart and Micah Richards were in the squad before the takeover in 2008. That means, more than twenty players from different cultures and footballing backgrounds have been brought into the side in just two years. It is a difficult task to get them to gel. It takes time, and in fairness City are showing signs of improving and fulfilling their potential. But having such an odd choice for captain makes it harder for a group of individuals to grow into a unit.

The job of Mourinho was made easier at Chelsea because of his captain, John Terry. On the other hand, Mancini’s captain, Carlos Tevez, is not a natural leader. Just because he is a brilliant Argentinean striker, it does not make him an iconic leader like Maradona.

Carlos Tevez has been one of the best players in the league this year and certainly City’s best player. I would never question the commitment he shows on the pitch; he tries as hard as anyone in the League. Fine, he sets a good example, but the squad at City is made up of hard working, experienced professionals. It is not a squad dominated by schoolboys who need to be shown the value of hard work (Balotelli excluded). The team lacks a cohesive team spirit that Mourinho’s Chelsea had in abundance. Tevez has about as much natural charisma as Gordon Brown. He might inspire hard work, but he does nothing to inspire team spirit.

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City need a captain to bring the new players together. He should be the first one to give an interview after the game, he should defend his team if they come under criticism. He should be the one to put an arm around new players and welcome them to the squad. He should have a presence on the pitch, of a leader not just a footballer. You see this kind of player in John Terry, Tony Adams even Rio Ferdinand. I have not seen any of these things from the diminutive, and often silent, Argentine.

With all the negatives surrounding Tevez’s leadership, you have to ask why was he appointed captain in the first place? I think it was to keep him sweet, after all, he is as good as anyone in the league. In part, Mancini would have wanted the captain’s armband to encourage Tevez to raise his game. To be fair he has played at an extremely high standard this year. But I also feel that he made Tevez captain in an attempt to keep him at the club for as long as possible, that is not a good reason to choose a captain.

Even so, this year Tevez has been unsettled. He has mentioned leaving Manchester due to homesickness and missing his children. He has also said that he might retire from football completely. These examples are another way in which he does not embody commitment to the team. At times he seems more concerned with his own goals and his own contract than the team he captains. He did say in February that he was now happy and ‘loves his shirt’, but you cannot trust this contentment to last forever. As far as I am concerned, Tevez is not the man to bring a side of new players together, and Mancini’s decision to make him captain was the wrong one.

The dilemma for Mancini is that if he was to change his club captain, he would upset Tevez and could see him leave the club. Mancini therefore finds himself in a catch 22 situation. Either he keeps Tevez as captain and sees the team’s spirit lull, or he chooses a new leader and loses one of the best players in the world. In reality he has to keep Tevez as captain, he cannot afford to lose a player of that quality. But he should never have given him the responsibility in the first place.

Keep up to date with Joe as the season comes to a close by following him on twitter.

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