Carlos Tevez secures move to Juventus: Transfer frees Manchester City to buy top class replacement

Club not as hamstrung by constraints of Uefa’s financial fair play regime as they might have feared

Tevez is set to move to Juventus (Getty Images)

Carlos Tevez will be given the iconic No 10 Juventus shirt worn by Alessandro del Piero and Michel Platini as he concluded his £7.6m move from Manchester City on a three-year deal on Thursday.

Tevez was greeted by hundreds of fans when he arrived for his medical at Turin's Malpensa Airport and declared “Juve was the club that wanted me most.” Juventus consider the transfer to be an excellent piece of business and Tevez was delighted to be handed the jersey which underlines his importance to the Turin club.

His departure leaves City in severe need of a replacement striker with Sergio Aguero and Edin Dzeko the only experienced players for the role and the 21-year-old Swede John Guidetti still not full fit and unlikely to be given a place in City's Premier League squad. Though Sunderland are understood to be interested in Guidetti, whose mystery illness rendered him unfit for most of last season, City do rate him and appear to want to keep him. A loan deal - similar to the one in which he flourished for Feyenoord in 2011/12 - is one possibility, though the priority is simply to get the player fit.

Guidetti's struggle for full fitness suggested that City will need to go into the transfer market, with the greater financial flexibility created by ridding themselves of Tevez's £198,000-a week wages. They may seek to renew their attempts to discuss Robert Lewandowski with his club, Borussia Dortmund, though City chief executive Ferran Soriano and director of football Txiki Begiristain left an initial meeting with the message that Lewandowski wants to join Bayern Munich. Dortmund do not want to let him go.

City have created the financial flexibility to go into the transfer market for a top class replacement for Tevez, having sold him for his 'book value' of £9m.

Tevez's depreciation cost to City in the last year of his contract at City would have been £9m, if an initial transfer fee of £45m is spread across the five years of his deal. By losing that from their books, plus his £198,000-a-week wages and bonuses which would have added up to £17m, the club would potentially have the money to buy Napoli's Edison Cavani, even at the inflated fee of £50m plus Tevez-level wages. A £50m fee for a player would accounted for across the term of that individual's contract.

City cautioned late on Tuesday night that they will not necessarily be using the sale of Tevez to justify a splurge of cash on a new striker. But the sales of Wayne Bridge, Kolo Toure and Roque Santa Cruz so early in the summer have also protected the club from a desperate last-minute attempt to lay off players to buying clubs who hold the negotiating cards - a problem in previous years.

It means the club are not as hamstrung by the constraints of Uefa's financial fair play (FFP) regime as they might have feared. The new Premier League TV deal also helps them in their quest to reduce loses from £97m last year to an aggregate of 45m euros (£38.1m) across last season and this, in line with FFP.