Carlos Tevez WILL lapse to Manchester City side to face Chelsea confirms trainer Roberto Mancini

Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini has confirmed he expects Carlos Tevez to return to the club on Thursday or Friday.

Argentina international Tevez was given compassionate leave and allowed to return to his homeland earlier this month due to complications with his wife Vanesa"s pregnancy.

The couple"s baby daughter has been in intensive care after being born prematurely and until this week it had been unclear when Tevez was likely to come back.

Return to action: Manchester City"s Argentinian striker Carlos Tevez

Mancini appeared to be at a loss on the matter following Sunday"s 0-0 draw with Liverpool, but yesterday Tevez"s adviser Kia Joorabchian insisted the player had kept City informed of developments and was hopeful of returning for Saturday"s trip to Chelsea in the Barclays Premier League.

Today Mancini indicated that, having spoken to Tevez, he was convinced he would be available for the match at Stamford Bridge.

"I spoke with him yesterday and I think that he will come back on Thursday or Friday morning," Mancini said, before adding: "I am sure."

He continued: "It is important Carlos comes back Thursday or Friday so he can play against Chelsea. He said to me that every day he has been training in Argentina, every morning.

"He had a serious problem but now I think he resolved his problem."

While Manchester City are optimistic of Tevez"s return, no flight to England has been booked.

City travel to Stoke tomorrow for an FA Cup fifth-round replay which will be the fourth game Tevez - their 19-goal top-scorer - will have missed, a sequence in which the team has struggled for form and so far failed to pick up a win.

Sharpshooter: Tevez has 19 goals this season

Reports had suggested that the situation may have soured relations between Tevez and Mancini, who admitted last week to having a disagreement with Craig Bellamy over the management of the Welsh forward"s long-standing knee injury.

But the Italian manager was adamant he retains the backing of his squad and claimed that any disputes that had gone on were nothing out of the ordinary.

He said: "For me it is not a problem. Usually I do not read the newspapers, but I have read (them) and for me everything is normal.

"I can speak with my players because we don"t have the same things, but this is normal. It is not a problem, not a serious problem for me."

Asked if he felt he has the full respect and confidence of the players, Mancini said: "Yes, absolutely. I have respect for the players always, but when I work I want to work very well and I want to work because I want to win. I do not work only to enjoy football.

"This is different. If we are going to win, we must change our mentality, we must work very well, we must think when we work and this is most important.

"But I haven"t got any problem with the players - or (they are) normal problems that a manager has with his team."

More...Baby doctor key to whether Tevez will be back for Man City"s trip to ChelseaSpurs, Liverpool, Man City or Villa? The lowdown on the race for fourth placeLiverpool are just living in the past while Man City are the future, insists BarryMANCHESTER CITY FC NEWS FROM ACROSS THE WEB

Kevin Pietersen set to come in from cold as England vice-captains purpose looks done for on the mend batsman

England are considering making Kevin Pietersen their official vice-captain in Bangladesh in an attempt to speed up his rehabilitation from the worst year of his professional life.

Pietersen ended England"s tour of South Africa desperately out of form to cap a miserable 12 months in which he lost the captaincy in acrimonious circumstances and then suffered a serious achilles tendon injury.

Now England may welcome him back into the management fold to try to eradicate any lingering resentment Pietersen feels about the insensitive way he was forced from office after complaining about coach Peter Moores.

Safe pair of hands: Kevin Pietersen may become Alastair Cook"s deputy

Alastair Cook, who will lead England in Bangladesh next week, wants an official vice-captain to help him in the absence of captain Andrew Strauss. And England are due to decide on their best man when they arrive in Dhaka for a two-Test and three one-day international tour on Sunday.

All logic points to Pietersen, not least because the only other viable candidate, Paul Collingwood, reiterated on his arrival here for two Twenty20 internationals against Pakistan on Friday and Saturday that his captaincy days in all but the shortest form are over.

"I had a go at captaincy and it was mentally fatiguing," said Collingwood, who resigned as England"s one-day leader in 2008. "We all saw the effect it had on my game and I"m happy just to do the Twenty20 job now."

Torment: Pietersen endured a torrid time on the tour to South Africa after his return from serious injury

There would be little point, then, in asking the Durham man to be Cook"s deputy when he is reluctant to step into the captaincy shoes should the young stand-in be injured in Bangladesh.

An intriguing long-term possibility for higher office is Stuart Broad, who could emerge as a rival to Cook as Strauss"s eventual successor, as long as the all-round demands on him and his own competitive spirit do not get the better of him.

Yet, even though Broad, 23, could well get some one-day international captaincy experience in the next year or so, it is unlikely England would ask him to back up a novice leader in Cook, 25.

It is clearly a job for someone of experience and Pietersen was shaping up to be a more than competent leader until the ECB decided both he and Moores would have to go at the start of 2009.

"Cooky and I have discussed this and we will have a vice-captain in place at the start of the Bangladesh tour," said England team director Andy Flower. "We"ve got a clear idea of who it might be and I don"t think it"s a very difficult decision."

England will make the short journey to Abu Dhabi tomorrow to play their own second-string Lions team, who have been in impressive form on their own tour of the United Arab Emirates.

Clydesdale Bank will sponsor the ECB"s new one-day domestic competition, the Clydesdale Bank 40. The 18 counties will compete along with Scotland, Holland and an ECB Recreational XI in three groups of seven, with four teams advancing to the semi-finals. More...Fifty-over players get their chance in the short game in time for Twenty20 World Cup I"ll be ready for Ponting, insists stand-in England captain Alastair CookECB get shirty to seal new lucrative four-year sponsorship dealAlastair Cook swaps lambing for leading Lions - but doesn"t want the job full-time

Iraq warrant Peter Moore - my ordeal

Deborah Haynes, Defence Editor & , : {}

Peter Moore, the solitary survivor of Britains misfortune kidnap predicament in dual decades, was hung off a doorway by his arms and doused in H2O by his captors, feared he would die from disease and outlayed months shackled to a grille on the wall.

Recalling his distress for the initial time in detail, the former warrant told The Times that he counted dots on a screen to kill time, invented a mother during hours of inquire and at one point even played ping-pong with his guards.

In an endless talk he rubbished claims that he was hold in Iran in a tract masterminded by the Republican Guard. He indicted elements of the Iraqi Government of collusion in his abduction, and suggested that British officials helped to secure his release.

He additionally removed the last time he saw his associate hostages Jason Swindlehurst, Jason Creswell, Alec MacLachlan and Alan McMenemy alive, and relived the terrifying impulse they were abducted on May 29, 2007.

Related LinksTimeline: Iraq kidnappingsBriton liberated after US hands over Iraq insurgentBritain stranded to no traffic policyMultimediaIN PICTURES: the distress of Peter Moore

Mr Moore, 36, an IT expert from Lincoln, was expelled last Dec after spending dual years, 7 months and one day in captivity.

I proposed to cry, he said, recounting the impulse he arrived at the British Embassy in Baghdad after being handed over to Sami al-Askiri, an Iraqi MP, by his abductors in Sadr City, a Shia dive in the easterly of the city.

At that point you wish to contend something profound, but I was like: I need a pee, pronounced Mr Moore, who has given outlayed weeks in debriefings with British troops and Foreign Office officials as well as on vacation friends and family.

Based in Guyana, Mr Moore pronounced he practical in early 2007 for a pursuit in Baghdad as an IT expert for BearingPoint, an American company, by mistake, meditative the on all sides was in the Caribbean not Iraq.

When I realised, I thought about it and the pursuit sounded flattering easy, precision IT staff in the Ministry of Finance to rise reports. I figured it was a great job, the not military, the assisting the Iraqi people, the kind of what I do in Guyana so I thought that would be unequivocally cool, he said.

On Apr 2, 2007 Mr Moore overwhelmed down at Baghdad airport. I recollect removing off the craft and saying plumes of fume only on the corner of the runway and thought: Ah geez acquire to Iraq.

He proposed precision computer programmers at the Finance Ministrys interpretation centre, that meant travelling multiform times a week from the fortified immature zone, where he was based, to a walled devalue opposite the city, utilizing a organisation of British security guards in dual armoured cars.

On the sunrise of his abduction, Mr Moore pronounced all seemed normal. He was training programmers in one room. A second British consultant, Peter Donkin, was subsequent doorway coaching a 4 Iraqi man on procurement.

The initial thing I knew was I listened a little man shout, in English: Get down! For a little reason, everybody in the room stood up so I stood up. Unfortunately that put me right subsequent to the door. It non-stop and there was a Ministry of Interior troops military officer there. He had a appurtenance gun strapped over his arm and a Glock pistol in his hand. His appurtenance gun was indicating true at my groin. I recollect thinking: If that goes off this is unequivocally going to hurt. I only put my hands up. He said: Come on. I said: Okay.

A Shia nonconformist organisation called the League of the Righteous, Asaib al-Haq, kidnapped Mr Moore and his 4 guards after a series of the members were arrested by British special forces in Iraq and upheld in to US custody. The kidnappers were ready to go as troops officers.

Mr Moore and the bodies of 3 of the guards were returned last year after the US troops expelled the organisation leaders as piece of a wider settlement process. There is no headlines yet, however, on the stays of Mr McMenemy.

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Mastermind at the back of riotous debate to fall short supplement emerges from dark

Penny Wark & , : {}

Id similar to to contend that he was wearing a facade and a cloak, and that we met in the guts of the Her Majestys Theatre, but the law is some-more prosaic: beanie hat, hoody, an arterial highway in London. This, sadly, is the den of the Phantom fan who has led the internet electioneer opposite Andrew Lloyd Webbers ultimate musical. Or to make use of his own description: I am the designer at the back of the riotous debate to fall short Love Never Dies. Thats some-more similar to it.

Yesterday I tracked down the man who stirred the infamous online verdicts that preceded the opening. Why has he taken on the strong Lord, I asked, and he indulged me with an carnival longer than multiform arias. The crux is that the events in Love Never Dies could not have followed Phantom, whose male lead dies in Gaston Lerouxs early 20th-century medieval story on that that the low-pitched is based.

The supplement creates 0 clarity and contradicts the total point of the original, says the man well call Gaston. So in Nov I set up a Twitter and Facebook organisation opposite it as a finish fun since there didnt appear to be any height for fans who know the story unequivocally well. Were up to about 800 people now, and critics inboxes have been inundated with the views. Lloyd Webber has underestimated the comprehension of his audience.

So Gastons censure is an inventive one? Phantom is the origination of a French writer and his estate is opposite the sequel, he replies. But since these days Phantom is compared some-more with Andrew Lloyd Webber theres a fright that this supplement will be taken as criterion and that destiny generations will think this is how the story was ostensible to continue. We dont wish to see that happen, and we dont wish to see the show pulled by the mud.

Related LinksLove Never DiesBloggers disapprove and make buzzing sound at lapse of the Phantom Lloyd Webber says itll be all right on the night

Gaston is young, rarely educated, veteran and earnest. Paranoid, too, that the barminess compared with Phantom fandom would not raise his budding career as a result his insistence on anonymity. He has a point. He has seen Phantom 40 times in venues around the world. Lloyd Webbers plan is to boot fans opinions, to contend that theyre spooky and sad. I positively dont go and see Phantom in costume, yowl copiously and buy an additional sheet on the approach out, he says.

Gaston has no plans to see Love Never Dies. I think Im utterly inside of my rights to decider something when I know the complete story and have listened the complete score. Were not perplexing to close the show, but to scold the indolence of the assumptions that fans are happy with the sequel, that weve been watchful for it. Thats what riled people. Job done, I think.

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Letter reveals how Queens forerunner Mary Eleanor Bowes transient marriage

Simon de Bruxelles & , : {}

She was described by a decider as the majority persecuted lady that ever was. Mary Eleanor Bowes, the Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne, was a rich heiress duped in to matrimony by an unethical brute who stole her money, raped her maids and still managed to get inaugurated to Parliament.

Now a minute from the forerunner of the Queen, who was well known as The Unlucky Countess, has come to light 220 years after her predicament scandalised Georgian Britain. In the letter, created in her own superb palm to a solicitor, she apologises for the check in creation hit after her shun from eight years of unlucky seizure by her husband.

The request was found between the writings of a Northumberland law association after the genocide of the last superfluous partner.

Bowes had turn the richest lady in Britain after the genocide of her father when she was 11. By the time she had the set-back to capture the courtesy of Andrew Stoney, an Irish armed forces officer, she had already been widowed once, when her father John Lyon, 9th Earl of Strathmore, died in 1776. They had been tied together for 9 years and had five children.

Related LinksThe English Marriage by Maureen WallerWedlock by Wendy Moore

Stoney constructed a love trap that still ranks as one of the sneakiest devised. After a array of insulting articles was published in the Morning Post he wrote sexually in her defence. When the articles one after another he challenged the newspapers editor to a duel.

He lost and appeared mortally wounded. He was carried to the heiress and begged her to accede to his failing wish: to give him her palm in marriage.

Stunned by the regretful offer the heiress fell in love with her defender. Their marriage took place in Jan 1777 with the presumably failing father propped up on a stretcher.

It was subsequently determined that Stoney had created the offending articles and that the newspapers editor was in cahoots with him. After the feign duel he daubed himself with animal red blood to have his proposal.

He altered his name to Bowes and forced her to revoke a prenuptial agreement safeguarding her fortune.

For the subsequent eight years Bowes was kept a restrained in her own home whilst Stoney consumed her money, slept with prostitutes and left a route of deceptive children. When she managed to shun in 1785 with the assistance of a consistent lassie and filed for divorce, he kidnapped her and proposed a national track that led to his detain and a three-year jail sentence.

The minute was created to her authorised deputy Charles Wren after her adventurous escape. She wrote: The impassioned precipitate of commercial operation in that I have been concerned ever given I left Mr Bowes and the consistent courtesy that my reserve has compulsory prevented me from delightful my wishes by essay to any of my friends, solely those whom a nearby attribute or the seductiveness of my means indispensably called on me to address; differently I should have taken an progressing event to surprise you of my shift of incident and the roughly supernatural shun that after eight years of rare wretchedness I have had from terminating a majority unlucky life by a really vicious death.

She refers to a declare who has additionally been detained by Stoney.

The story of the Unlucky Countess was the theme of a book published last year underneath the pretension Wedlock How Georgian Britains Worst Husband met his Match.

The writer Wendy Moore said: This minute was created only a month after she transient and prior to she was taken again by Stoney. She was in stealing at the time. In the minute she mentions a declare who Stoney had kidnapped. This would have been Dorothy Stephenson. She was a lassie and had been raped by Stoney and had a kid by him. She had concluded to be a declare and was consequential to the divorce case.

The divorce was hold in a church justice and thereafter she could legally live detached from her father but couldnt re-marry. The justice found in her foster since of her husbands impassioned cruelty and adultery.

The minute is approaching to be sole for up to �150 at auction in Ludlow, Shropshire, today.

The auctioneer Richard Westwood-Brookes of Mullocks, said: This is a conspicuous letter. Stoneys tract to wed her was monumental in the audacity. He was a inhuman brute but any ethics and put his mother by scarcely a decade of impassioned torment.

In the letters she remarks on her unlucky life and tells how Stoney has carried off one of the divorce witnesses but any apply oneself to the Habeas Corpus.

Bowes was the good great, great, great-grandmother of the Queen and her estate enclosed Glamis Castle, childhood home of the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

The divorce was postulated by the London Consistory Court after she constructed justification of her husbands illicit love affair as well as beating, scratching, biting, pinching, whipping, kicking, imprisoning, insulting, provoking, tormenting, mortifying, degrading, tyrannising, cajoling, deceiving, lying, starving, forcing, compelling, and wringing of the heart. She wanting to discuss blackmail, kidnap and bribery.

RBS the Governments intensity piggy bank

Ian King: Business reason & , : {}

Stephen Hester competence well have been tempted to allude to Churchill yesterday. Not the nodding dog that advertises the insurer of that name that Royal Bank of Scotland is perplexing to sell but the line from the wartime personality about it not being the commencement of the finish but, perhaps, the finish of the beginning.

For Mr Hester obviously believes that RBS has reached an inflexion point in how the state-controlled bank is perceived. And he has good reason to think that.

George Osbornes proposals to sell ignored shares in the bank to sell investors competence not have won concept acclaim, but they do point to a shift in the mood music, from one where politicians courtesy RBS not as a complaint but as a intensity piggy bank and an event to revoke the deficit.

Mr Hester could additionally prominence that, notwithstanding drawn out open condemnation of bankers and of RBS in particular, scarcely each commercial operation inside of the bank has combined to the patron bottom or confirmed it.

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There was additionally copiousness to similar to in the numbers. Headline pre-tax waste came in reduce than expected, net seductiveness margins are streamer in the right citation and core RBS those tools of the bank that will still be in place once it has finished a estimable definition and ordering programme doubled the handling profits. Best of all, possibly, was headlines that, for the initial time in at slightest 6 quarters, impairments were down in the last 3 months of 2009 and, in Mr Hesters view, have peaked.

It was not all good news. Ulster Bank stays a basket box with that RBS accepts it has no preference but to persevere; impairments and write-offs in the non-core piece of RBS are expected to sojourn high and the total from RBS Insurance, together with that nodding dog, were shockingly bad and are expected to sojourn so in a cut-throat market. The numbers additionally crop up to have been flattered to the balance of �2 billion by a little jiggery-pokery with the grant fund, for that Mr Hester was incompetent to yield an lucid explanation.

The big subject for 2010 concerns the border to that RBSs some-more normal UK sell and corporate promissory note arms are able of pushing growth. The clever underlying formula for 2009 were driven mostly by a clever opening from the Global Banking & Markets division, that will not be repeated. The less glamorous tools of the bank will, therefore, have to collect up the tardy if movement is not to be lost.

RBS is additionally starting to think serve ahead; one of the majority engaging revelations yesterday was that the liquidity pot had risen from �90 billion in 2008 to �171 billion last year, with the suit accounted for by gilts and alternative peculiarity emperor debt not Greek Government bonds, greatfully note rising from �1 billion to �20 billion. In a post-Basel III world, Mr Hester sees that rising to �50 billion, that will be good headlines for the Debt Management Office as it spits out �700 billion value of gilts during the subsequent five years but which, as he points out, will meant at slightest �700 million value of foregone increase annually.

Mr Hester was you do his most appropriate to downplay expectations again yesterday he does not design a lapse to altogether profitability until 2011 nonetheless it is ideally possible, presumption that the economy does not slip behind in to recession, that this could be completed by RBS this year. Oh yes, as Churchill himself competence say.

Ian Poulter sees off Paul Casey in World Championship Match Play last Sport The Guardian

Ian Poulter of England celebrates after winning the WGC Accenture Match Play in Arizona. Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Getty Images

Ian Poulter is a universe champion, Paul Casey is a runner-up again – and England right away has 3 players in the world"s tip six. An unusual week for a nation that a decade ago had usually Lee Westwood in the tip 100 finished with Poulter, ready to go all in pink, achieving a shining lass US Tour feat at the World Golf Championship Accenture Match Play in Arizona last night.

Casey, who pennyless his steep on the circuit at last season"s Houston Open, was knocked about 42 in the 36-hole last a year after going down 43 to the Australian Geoff Ogilvy.

The span were competing not usually for the pretension and additional esteem income of roughly £350,000 – the winner"s coupon was £890,607 and the runner-up perceived £540,726 – but additionally the universe No5 spot.

Westwood, notwithstanding his first-round exit on Wednesday, stays the highest-placed European at fourth but Poulter and Casey are right away rught away at the behind of him. Poulter is the initial Englishman to win any of the 4 World Golf Championship particular titles given they began in 1999. The win roughly guarantees him a third Ryder Cup tip in Oct and conjunction he nor Casey should need a wild label this time.

"It feels really, unequivocally nice," he said. "It"s been a prolonged time entrance and I am really happy. It was a good day"s golf. I knew I was in good form and I felt ease all day – nerves weren"t any cause at all. I know Paul"s unhappy being runner-up dual years in a row."

Casey initial had to get past the Colombian Camilo Villegas at the begin of the day. Their semi-final was halted after twenty-three holes on Saturday since of vanishing light but on the resumption Villegas snap-hooked his opening expostulate in to the dried dumpy and Casey, propitious to shun when his competition longed for from underneath 3 feet on the immature before, won with a standard four.

Minutes after he was teeing off again but the usually time he led was when he was conceded an eagle on the prolonged 2nd after a stately 216-yard proceed to eight feet. Poulter birdied the subsequent from 7 feet, went forward on the 7th and by the 14th was 4 clear.

Losing an additional hole at that point would have incited a fool around in to a predicament for Casey but he got behind in to the compare over the shutting widen of the sunrise round. Lunching dual down meant it was still all to fool around for but Poulter birdied the subsequent dual holes from fifteen and 6 feet and, notwithstanding twos from Casey at the 21st and 24th – he roughly aced the second of those – the opening was 3 at the turn.

When Casey done a 14-footer on the subsequent it was game-on again but Poulter got up and down at the following dual and roughly chipped in for eagle at the 33rd. Casey lipped out from thirteen feet to tumble 3 down with 3 to fool around and, when he unsuccessful to get up and down from a fort on the short next, Poulter, with dual for it, done a 10-footer to put the topping on the cake.

"Ian played glorious golf," pronounced Casey. "There were a lot of shots I wantedto lift off and didn"t but he did a illusory job. I don"t feel physically tired, I feel mentally sleepy but I am not creation excuses."

While Casey was an pledge star – English hold up dual years running, Walker Cup partner of Luke Donald, universe group championship runner-up and American college leader – Poulter"s story is very, really different.

Two years comparison at 34, he incited veteran in 1994 with a four-handicap and with no inhabitant honours. He longed for to fool around on debate but did not have it by the subordinate propagandize until the fourth attempt.

Poulter worked in the pro emporium at the Hitchin bar Jack o" Legs, declared after a 14th-century impression from folk fable who lived in a cavern . Yet once he eventually got his label Poulter – right away value millions himself and with a pick up of cars to that he not long ago combined a Ferrari California and Mercedes s-63 – was a leader in his initial deteriorate as well. The Italian Open helped him turn Rookie of the Year for 2000 and his name is on that prize usually on tip of Casey"s. Off and running, he had five some-more wins in the subsequent 4 years and done his Ryder Cup entrance along with Casey in the 2004 feat in Detroit.

Casey did not have to go over the 14th hole in his initial 4 games this week but afterwards had his conspicuous scuffle with Villegas and came by usually after the Colombian had longed for from underneath 3 feet on Saturday evening.

Poulter, tip scorer with 4 points out of five at Valhalla dual years ago, went to an additional hole in his initial compare with theAmerican Justin Leonard but after that gained such certainty that in the semi-finals that he thrashed Sergio Garcia 76. PA