Gone And Forgotten

This image sums up Robinho at City — he didn't sink or swim, but just floated.

He came, he saw, he put in no effort this season and buggered off to Brazil to show exactly what he’s worth talent-wise and financially.

Robinho is gone, awwww. Yep, shed a tear and ponder the loss.

Robinho has moved to Santos to play in a far inferior league to the EPL, but his choice of an easy ride does not surprise at all. What does surprise, however, is the mammoth pay cut he took for the easy life.

Santos are picking up his wages but these will now be just £50k a week, dropping from the £160k he was collecting in Manchester! It seems Santos know exactly what he’s worth.

The move is just a loan but a permanent transfer should be finalized at the end of the season as he isn’t coming back to City in a hurry, though Robinho’s former employees will want to recoup some of the £32.5 million pounds they spent on liberating the forward from Real Madrid (who probably rubbed their hands together at the thought of selling such an over rated one trick pony for so much money).

Someone will have to pay, and Santos have a plan to raise the cash.

“The big difficulty was the financial operation, despite Robinho being prepared to take a pay cut to play for Santos again. From then on, we set up a financial enterprise to make the signing viable.” – Santos President, Luis Alvaro de Oliveira Ribeiro.

Hmm, financial enterprise? Like making Robinho your hoe to make the numbers add up so you can afford to keep him? Tell me more, Mr. President.

“Robinho will hand over his image and become an advertising model during the period of the contract with Santos. In exchange for that, there’s a financial input to cover the demands of a great star. Robinho, with his charisma, his performance on the pitch and his image of an idol, will attract better sponsors to Santos and all this at zero cost to the club.”

So you are going to make him pose with everything from hard liquor to condoms to pay the bills, gotcha!

While at Man City Robinho cashed pay-checks totaling £11.5m. Or we could look at that another way, each goal cost City £821,428. Wow.

Bojinov. So thats what he looks like!

Good job that Man City haven’t spent any more cash on bad strikers who have been epic fails… oops. Wait, they did. There was Valeri Bojinov who cost £5.7m, now out on loan. Felipe Caicedo cost £5.2m and he’s out on loan. Then Jo, who cost £18m and made just 9 appearances, scoring 1 goal. That’s an expensive goal! Where is he now? Yep, he was loaned out while already on loan!

Well at least City got the balance right eventually (you’ll have to go a long way to find a better mix of forwards than Bellamy, Tevez, Adebayor, Benjani and Roque Santa-Cruz.) and it only cost them £147.4m pounds. Bargain.

As for Robinho, City can afford such expensive mistakes and I am sure there will be more. He was a substitute at Everton last week and substituted! That tells you all you need to know. Mancini will not miss him at all; I’m sure keeping him happy and trying to fit his selfish one-dimensional game into the side every week was a giant headache to the Italian.

Robinho’s time in England will be remembered for one thing only: his whirlwind arrival proclaiming a new exciting era for City fans. His football, on the other hand? Forgotten already.