Source: Eurosport
Hughes plays down Richards spat
Manchester City manager Mark Hughes has moved to play down a training ground bust-up he had with Blues defender Micah Richards.Newspaper reports claimed the 20-year-old had an argument with his boss on Friday but Hughes said it was a minor incident."People seem to be making a big thing of the little exchange we had. These things happen time and time again at training grounds," he said after his side's 2-1 victory at Everton, only their second away win of the season."Our training ground is a little bit open and every day we have long-range lenses pointed in our direction."I didn't pay much attention to the incident at the time. It was something and nothing and it didn't affect Micah's performance, I thought he was excellent."If it had been a serious incident he wouldn't have played today so that shows you the strength of it."Richards was one of a number of players who put in impressive performances at Everton to secure City's first Premier League away win since August 31.British transfer record signing Robinho opened the scoring in the 35th minute when he raced on to Elano's through-ball, left Phil Jagielka standing and fired through goalkeeper Tim Howard's legs.The £32.5million Brazilian then turned provider for Stephen Ireland nine minutes after half-time when he picked out the charging midfielder in acres of space as City caught their hosts on the counter-attack.Substitute Dan Gosling fired an injury-time consolation but it could not prevent City's first win at Goodison Park since October 1992, ending a run of three successive away defeats for Hughes' side."Robinho has had criticism of his performances away from home, unjustified on occasions, but I thought he was outstanding today," added Hughes."His growing relationship in his play with Stephen Ireland, I thought they were both outstanding."Thankfully that away win is here now. We've played okay in some games and today I thought it was a good, solid Premier League performance."I changed it a bit today with Nigel De Jong and Vincent Kompany asked to sit in there and give us a shield in front and I think that helped us."Everton boss David Moyes said his side should have had a penalty late on when Leighton Baines' cross hit Richard Dunne's arm and felt they were on the rough end of a few decisions from referee Alan Wiley."It was a penalty. It hits Richard Dunne in the arm - he doesn't mean it but if it stops a pass going to our player in the box with his arm it's a penalty kick," he said."I also think the one in the box when [Vincent] Kompany had his arms around Fellaini's neck could have been looked at and questioned."Moyes believed his team's exertions in reaching the FA Cup final on penalties against Manchester United on Sunday and the midweek goalless draw at Chelsea had taken its toll on his team."I think the last week has caught up with us. We weren't quite there," he added."We played well enough for 20 minutes and we got in good positions but didn't cross the ball well or didn't make the areas to score."We lost a poor counter-attack goal from our free-kick on the halfway line and it ended up them scoring from it."But I thought the boys did well to hang in there and I thought if we got one goal back at any time we were back in the game."Gosling's goal came just that little bit late."[LNB]
