Roque Santa Cruz is exactly the sort of player that Manchester City need to silence everyone doubting the club, according to manager, Mark Hughes. Santa Cruz is one of the players that made the move to City during the summer but has not been able to get into the side because of injury.

The point that Hughes talks about him is because he is not a player that appears to carry an ego. He is more of a good old English type of centre forward than any thing else and Hughes believes this will help the performance of the club and the reputation of the club.

He said: “I like what he gives us. He is a big guy, his physical presence is important for us, because we are not the biggest team in the world up front.”

“Technically, he is good enough. I will always remember the first training session he had at Blackburn and the reaction the other players showed when they saw what he had produced. He has the ability that you sit up and take notice of. I blew all my budget on him when I was at Blackburn and that shows you what I thought of him. He did wonderfully there and if he can replicate even half of that then he will be good value.”

“Roque has been at the biggest club in Germany so he is used to performing under pressure at a club with a big profile. He has the mentality I need.”

It is unknown at this stage whether or not Santa Cruz will be back in Premier League action any time soon. He is still in the recovery stages of injury and although if he was thrown in at the deep end for City’s next Premier League game, he wouldn’t complain but it would not be wise.

As for the point about reputation, City are fast associating themselves with a lot of players who seem to be very egotistical. If Santa Cruz comes in then he can hit the ground running and prove to all of the neutrals around the country that City have good work ethical players and are not just a bunch of over paid premadonas.

It will be good to see him back on a football pitch and although the likes of Wrexham are good and honest clubs they have nothing in Premier League standards. Santa Cruz’s recovery canno be gauged until he is playing against the best that football has to offer.

Arsenal manager, Arsene Wenger, has launched a scathing attack on Manchester City in the wake of the incidents that surrounded their match at the weekend. Wenger is thought to be furious because of the way that former Arsenal player, Emanuel Adebayor reacted to him personally as well as his side and the Arsenal fans.

Wenger said: “Did you watch it? If you’ve watched football for 20 years, you know as well as me what a player can do. You can ease off or not ease off. The biggest thing is in a challenge.”

“I played football and I know exactly, in a fraction of a second, where you leave in or move out. You know exactly at that fraction, I can injure somebody or I can not injure somebody, and you ease off or you leave in. I have seen some challenges where if you do that in the street, you go to jail. It [the challenge on Van Persie] looks very bad. You ask 100 people, 99 will say it’s very bad and the hundredth will be Mark Hughes.”

“In football, everybody is free to have an opinion. If somebody stamps on your head in that way, you wouldn’t say: ‘Thank you very much. Can I turn the other cheek?’ Only Jesus Christ did that.”

“What people say is that sometimes a striker makes the most of it because he wants to cheat. Sometimes because he wants to protect himself and sometimes because he wants to show the referee that he has been touched. Sometimes it is a reflex. It doesn’t mean that the player is always cheating.”

This is not the first time that Wenger has come out publicly with some strong views but it is one of the very few times when a lot of people have actually agreed with him. How Mark Hughes can defend how his player behaved at the weekend is very strange and it does not reflect well on him or the club.

City fans should be ashamed, instead of sitting with some sort of sick satisfaction. The club is quickly going down the route of being hated and have taints associated with every thing they now achieve. When you are not the most fond of football clubs in the first place you need the players to work hard and grind out the victory, not behave like an animal and an idiot.

Manchester City will not fight any ban that is given to their star striker, Emanuel Adebayor. The Football Association have already dished out a three match ban for the players stamp on Arsenal’s, Robin Van Persie, and an investigation into Adebayor’s celebration in front of Arsenal fans is ongoing.

The former Gooner has been heavily criticised ever since City’s victory last weekend and although Mark Hughes is inciting hatred for his defence of the player, the club have said they will not challenge the FA decision.

A City statement read: “The player strongly maintains that he did not intend to act in a violent manner. He apologised on the day to Robin van Persie personally and to the wider public for the outcome of the challenge.”

It does appear that City are trying to move on from the incident which has reflected very badly on the club itself. With crucial matches coming up, including one against high flying Tottenham and current champions Manchester United, the emphasis needs to be on the pitch.

The point is that there would be no value at all in putting together an appeal package. This may seen by the FA as merely problematic and a delaying tactic by City which could eventually get the ban increased to four or five matches. It would not be the first time that the FA would have done this and the three match ban is consideed sufficient enough by the Manchester club.

In a bizarre twist it seems that Adebayor has drawn some defence from Spurs manager, Harry Redknapp. He said: “I’ve got no time for people kicking anybody or being violent on the football pitch and he was wrong to run the length of the field, but it’s very difficult when you’re getting abuse throughout the game like he was.”

“It’s not celebrating a goal that cause riots, it’s idiots who want to start riots. Adebayor went over the top but, at the same time, he was getting a lot of abuse from the fans for the whole afternoon.”

“What did he do really? Run back and go like that, saying he scored. I’m not saying it’s right but if you can’t go near the away fans when you score because you’ll cause a riot. If I had been standing there and we had been giving him grief all game and he did that, I would probably say, ‘Fair play’.”

Manchester City are being forced to grovel in the wake of the fiasco that erupted after Emanuel Adebayor’s goal against his former club, Arsenal. The player has been made to send a signed shirt by his manager, to the steward that was injured as Arsenal fans tried to get onto the pitch after Adebayor’s taunts.

The shirt has also been sent with a not of apology but it is an instance that the club should never have allowed to happen in the first place. The player is also about to receive a three to four match ban for a stamp on Robin Van Persie’s face earlier on in the same match.

City boss, Mark Hughes, said: “Emmanuel strongly maintains that there was no malice intended in the challenge on Robin van Persie and apologised to him when he hugged him on leaving the field of play at the end of the game. The referee [Mark Clattenburg] had a great view of the challenge from Ade and the one that preceded it by Van Persie and deemed at the time that neither were worthy of either a yellow or red card.”

The Football Association is also now likely to call in the manager to explain comments he made after the game, comments similar to the ones above that condone the actions of the player contracted to his club. Hughes was criticised in the press recently by saying that Adebayor had every right to react how he did after he was subjected to a tremendous amount of ‘personal abuse’ during his time at Arsenal.

The point is that Mark Hughes is losing a lot of respect and the image of his club is going down the toilet. The reason the FA may decide to ask him to explain his comments is because they suite clearly contradict the evidence in place. Video footage shows that Adebayor’s stamp on Van Persie looked deliberate and although the player has said otherwise, it does not take an idiot to put two and two together and see exactly what was intended.

A police spokeswoman said of the match: “The player’s goal celebration caused the opposition fans to be aggravated and there was a crowd surge. One of the objects that were thrown caught a steward and knocked him out. It’s the decision of the club, the ground security and the FA now whether they want to take the incident any further, but it must have been quite horrific for all the stewards at the time.”

Liverpool have become the latest Premier League club to be involved in the tapping up scandal that has infested English football. Crewe Alexandra have reported Liverpool after it emerged in the press that they had approached an unnamed 15-year-old player illegally.

The news comes shortly after Chelsea were banned from signing any players for the next two transfer windows, Manchester United about to launch legal action against Le Havre and reports of an apparent ban proposal to be put towards Manchester City.

It seems that the only way the biggest clubs in England are going to learn is if they are punished severely. At current it appears that there are holes all over the system that top clubs have been abusing and if these allegations from Crewe are correct then Liverpool could be next in the firing line.

Dario Gradi, Crewe’s Director of Football, said: “We have a situation where one of our 15-year-olds has been approached. He is an outstanding player by any standards and he has come in and told us that he wants to leave right now to join a big club.”

“The big clubs are stealing other people’s players and you worry financially for the clubs where the players are stolen from. What sort of compensation are we going to get for all the work that has gone into developing him? Any compensation is insignificant for the effort that gone in.”

“I’m delighted with what has happened with Chelsea. I would hope all the big clubs are frightened to death. There is no excuse for breaking the rules. We lost a 12-year-old to Everton. He was our best 12-year-old. The lure is that the bigger clubs pay big expenses. This kid will be getting several hundred pounds a week in expenses. We pay expenses but nothing like that. It’s more a case of giving out £20 if someone can pick a kid up en-route.”

Gradi’s point is a very simple one, only until similar situations appear, like the one at Chelsea, will big clubs stop poaching players from the clubs that have developed them. These are clubs that are in no position at all to be able to stop the bigger sides from offering financial incentives as a reward for playesr to break their contracts.

Credit must go for the action that has been brought against Chelsea but there has to be a universal action to stop poaching all together.