Manchester City fans were left spluttering into their cups of tea on Sunday as revelations that Carlos Tevez wants to leave Eastlands emerged.

'Doing a Rooney', the Argentinian handed in a public transfer request, before then blasting his club's handling of the situation, before denying he had a problem with everyone at the club. Why can no high-profile player just be happy in Manchester?

In a fairly uncompromising attack on Tevez, Sam Wallace at The Independent is among those in the press urging City to stop appeasing and mollycoddling their captain and just let him go.

"When Carlos Tevez joined West Ham on the last day of the 2006 summer transfer window with Javier Mascherano – in arguably the most extraordinary episode of illegal transfer-dealing of the last decade – it fell to Alan Pardew, who was the manager at the time, to try to explain it.

"When I met the players I didn't have to sell West Ham United to them," Pardew said. "They knew all about our success last season and our style of play as the Premiership is shown on TV in South America every week."

Unfortunately for Pardew – who it turned out was just as bewildered as to what Tevez was doing at Upton Park as the rest of us – he could not have sounded less convincing had he been standing in Green Street market behind a suitcase of reconditioned mobile phones.

Tevez has made a habit – sometimes unintentionally, sometimes not – of making managers and clubs look daft. In his wake as he has shimmied and feinted his way across English football in the last four years is a trail of rows and fall-outs. Yes, he is a good player but he also comes with a health warning as to his potential effect on a club's sanity.

West Ham? The club had to agree £21m in compensation for breaching the third-party rules on player ownership over Tevez's deal. Manchester United? His provocative gestures to the Old Trafford directors' box were followed shortly by the most rancorous cross-Manchester transfer in history. Manchester City? He wants out."