Manchester City Football Club News

• Nickname:Sky Blues
• Founded:1887
• Manager:Roberto Mancini

• Ground:City of Manchester Stadium
• Capacity:48,000

Hughes hails Robinho display

26 Apr 2009 - 11:32:15

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Manchester City boss Mark Hughes was full of praise for Robinho after the Brazilian scored in the 2-1 victory at Everton.

The £32.5million record signing has been criticised for his performances away from Eastlands this season, with his strike against the Toffees only the third on his travels.

However, Hughes said after the game: "Robinho has had criticism of his performances away from home, unjustified on occasions, but I thought he was outstanding.

"His growing relationship is 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 I thought it was a good, solid Premier League performance.

"I changed it a bit 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."

Meanwhile, Hughes dismissed reports of a big training ground bust-up with Micah Richards, adding: "People seem to be making a big thing of the little exchange we had. These things happen time and time again at training grounds.

"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, so that shows you the strength of it."