Mark Hughes has played down Robinho’s decision to walk straight down the tunnel after the Manchester City forward was substituted against Tottenham Hotspur.
Robinho was replaced after an hour of City’s 3-0 defeat at White Hart Lane on Wednesday evening and opted not to sit on the bench with his team-mates.
“He wasn’t injured,” said Hughes.
“There is no hard-and-fast rule that he has to sit on the bench.
“He started reasonably well down the left-hand side. He was involved and linked with our front guys, but as the game wore on he found it more difficult to have a positive impact so we made a change.”
Hughes was unhappy with his team’s performance which could ultimately undermine City’s top four aspirations.
“We’re disappointed,” added Hughes. “We didn’t hit any kind of level. For the first 30 minutes we took the game to them, but in terms of producing a real threat we were not creating.
“At the moment we are having difficulty when the ball goes into the box. We were disappointed at half-time because we thought we should have done better with the goal. The second goal killed us.
“There are no excuses, we missed personnel and were lacking width because of that. but we had a team good enough to get a positive result.”
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