CARLOS TEVEZ may spend the rest of the season in limbo after AC Milan announced there was little likelihood of signing him on loan. The club’s managing director, Adriano Galliani, said he would spend the final day of the transfer window in his office in Milan’s Via Turati attempting to salvage some kind of deal.

Nevertheless, if the offer is a no-strings attached loan, as it has been throughout the month, then the answer from the Etihad will again be no. Galliani said after signing the considerably less famous Argentinian forward, Maxi Lopez from Catania: “We are not expecting Tevez to join us now and we will probably take another look at him in the summer.

“But there could be a surprise, you never know, sometimes things develop very late but right now I would have to say nothing will happen.”

Manchester City, who stopped paying Tevez at the end of November, are unsure when he might return from Argentina. Once he reports to their training ground at Carrington, the club would have difficulty withholding his weekly salary of €236,000.

Yesterday marked the deadline for his appeal to the Premier League against the club’s fine of six weeks’ wages for gross misconduct in absenting himself without leave. As the Premier League’s offices in Gloucester Place closed, it said it had received no indications of an appeal, although Tevez and his representatives had until midnight to do so in writing.

It is still not impossible that his next flight from Buenos Aires’ Ezeiza airport will be to Milan Malpensa. Galliani has been at the heart of Milan since 1986 and the 67-year-old has a reputation for bringing in cut-price deals. Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Robinho cost €28 million and €21 million respectively, almost half of what Barcelona and Manchester City had paid. He reminded reporters that he had secured Palermo’s midfielder, Antonio Nocerino, in the last hour of the August transfer window.

He had spent all of last Thursday afternoon in direct contact with City’s chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak by telephone and fax. The offer was a no-strings-attached loan until the end of the season with a deadline of 6.30pm. Milan calculated the deal would cost them €12 million. Khaldoon turned him down absolutely.

His terms were a loan with a guarantee of a permanent transfer of around €30 million. The deadline proved flexible as they often do in football and Manchester City have not ruled out another offer on the final day of a transfer window that has not panned out as their manager, Roberto Mancini, had hoped.

At the start of it, he said that he wanted rid of three footballers – Tevez, Wayne Bridge and Nedem Onuoha. Thus far only the last and the least expensive has left.

Milan was Tevez’s last and best hope of leaving City. It is 63 days since he was last paid; 83 since he left England possibly for good; 126 since he refused to come on as a substitute at Bayern Munich and 132 since he played his last game.

It should have been a simple transfer and a lucrative one. There were three serious suitors, five if you include West Ham United and the off-the-cuff offer from Liverpool of swapping Andy Carroll for Tevez.

Of them all, Paris St-Germain would have been the most straightforward. Like Manchester City they are awash with oil money, from Qatar rather than Abu Dhabi, and had no trouble getting their hands on the required €30 million. They could offer coaching, in English, by Carlo Ancelotti and the prospect of playing alongside another Argentinian in Javier Pastore. They could even increase his salary. Their sporting director, Leonardo, did not dispute that €298,961 was a viable weekly salary. However, Tevez considered Ligue 1, with its trips to Dijon and Evian, to be beneath him.

Massimo Moratti, Internazionale’s president, kept up a persistent rearguard action before admitting that Tevez only ever saw himself in red and black. Milan, however, are not flush with funds. Had Alexandre Pato gone through with his stated aim of joining PSG after falling out with his coach, Massimiliano Allegri, Galliani would have been able to demand a fee of €30 million. And PSG would have paid cash. The rest would have been easy.

Instead, Pato changed his mind and Milan were forced to manoeuvre and hope that, faced with the prospect of Tevez once more within their walls, Manchester City would fold. This discounted a single fact. This is a club with an unlimited supply of chips.

City travel to Goodison Park to play Everton tonight. With Mario Balotelli serving the second game of a four-match suspension and both Yaya and Kolo Toure on African Nations Cup duty with the Ivory Coast, Mancini is relieved to have skipper Vincent Kompany available again.

The Belgium skipper has missed four matches since his controversial dismissal against Manchester United at the beginning of the month.