What can Manchester City do about Carlos Tevez?

MANCHESTER CITY have suspended mutineer Carlos Tevez for two weeks after he apparently refused to come off the bench and play for the club against Bayern Munich on Tuesday. The striker has been banned from City's training ground and stadium for a fortnight. The club will have to decide then what to do with the him in the long term.
 
Manager Roberto Mancini has vowed that the Argentine will never play for City again, but with three months before the January transfer window opens it appears to be Tevez who holds all the aces. The two-week ban is the longest allowed under players' union rules and he can be fined no more than two weeks' wages, although that does apparently amount to half-a-million pounds. To make matters worse, he is unlikely to be in very good condition when he does return to training after two weeks on the golf course.
 
What are City's options now?

DROP HIM
Leaving Tevez to 'rot' in the reserves sounds like a fitting punishment but it would hurt City as much as the player. Tevez is paid a staggering £250,000 a week, and as long as he continues to train as instructed the club will be obliged to pay him. Furthermore, it would be hard to convince another club to fork out very much money on a player who isn't getting any first team action.
 
Tevez's contract runs until the summer of 2014 so he could theoretically collect his wages and train with the reserves for the best part of three years. That is what Chelsea misfit Winston Bogarde did after being jettisoned from the first team. The Dutch defender made one appearance for Chelsea between Boxing Day 2000 and the end of his contract in the summer of 2004. During that time he happily trained with the reserve and youth teams and was paid £40,000 a week to do so.
 
SACK HIM
City may be the richest club in the world, but sacking a player could equate to writing off his transfer value. In the summer, when Tevez wanted to leave the club, City valued him at £50m and turned down an offer of £40m from Corinthians in Brazil to take him off their hands. If they were to fire him now they would be throwing away any chance of a transfer fee and not even City can afford to write off an asset valued at £50m.
 
What's more, once sacked Tevez would be a free agent and could sign up with whoever he liked, rubbing salt into City's wounds. However, there are things City could do to lessen the impact if they do dismiss him…
 
SUE HIM
This could be the club's best option financially. It would involve sacking Tevez for breach of contract, and then taking him to court in a bid to recoup some of his transfer value. It was the path Chelsea went down when striker Adrian Mutu tested positive for cocaine in 2005. The player was eventually ordered to pay Chelsea around £14m in compensation, although the court case has been rumbling on for years and it has been reported that Mutu, who currently plays for Cesena in Italy's Serie A, is considering an appeal to the European Court of Justice.
 
BAN HIM
If he was sacked City could seek to try and prevent him from playing for a rival by having him banned by Fifa. On Wednesday Fifa vice-president Jim Boyce from Northern Ireland said he felt the player should be barred from playing. "If Manchester City prove it, write to Fifa and state the exact circumstances, I believe Fifa should have the power to ban the player from taking an active part in football," he said. "I would have no problem with that whatsoever. What happened was despicable."
 
LOAN HIM OUT
This is a tempting prospect. Indeed Irish League club Limavady United sent a fax to City, jokingly offering to take the player on loan for the remainder of the season. A loan would allow City to wash their hands of the player without diminishing his transfer value. City could then offload him permanently in January or in the summer. The drawbacks are finding a club that would want him – and, of course, City would be the ones paying his wages.
 
FORGIVE HIM
If the player is suitably contrite then why not let bygones be bygones? Unfortunately, things have gone too far for that to be a realistic option for City. The manager has stated publicly more than once that Tevez will not play for him again. If he does so, then it would completely undermine Mancini's credibility. What's more Tevez wants out of Manchester anyway - there's little point building bridges now.
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