Football supporters know their team cannot win every week; it is often the little victories, away from the field of play, that are sustaining. At a dinner in Manchester last weekend, club shirts signed by Dimitar Berbatov, Ryan Giggs and Robinho were auctioned for charity. Manchester City fans in the room were gleeful when Robinho’s jersey sold for £700 - about the same amount raised by both the Manchester United shirts put together. “Worth twice as much as Berbatov,” one Sky Blue crowed. Of course Robinho is not, but identifying his true value as a player is one of the puzzles of football.

In Brazil he was billed as “the new Pele”. Nobody could live up to that, but the youngster’s mesmeric performances for Santos established him as a talent of the highest order. Although the national team is managed by the utilitarian Dunga, it has come to revolve around Robinho’s charisma and skills. At 24, he has more than 50 caps for the selecao. “Everyone expects something special from Robinho. He has this ease, a huge ability. The problems he causes players make me sweat,” said Carlos Parreira, the former Brazil coach.

Compatriots do not debate the quality of Robson de Souza. The arguments about “little Robson” begin in Europe. At Real Madrid he arrived in a blaze of excitement and left via a changing room window: that was the point of egress from the training ground that he used to avoid scrutiny from fans. When Fabio Capello managed the madridistas, he regularly left Robinho out of his starting XI. Bernd Schuster, Capello’s successor, was much more of a supporter, calling Robinho “fundamental” to his best XI and indulging several bouts of indiscipline.

For a spell either side of last season’s winter break in Spain, Robinho lived up to the hype. He finished 2007-08 with 11 goals and 14 assists. Yet long before the campaign was out, Real were courting Cristiano Ronaldo as his replacement. Although Ronaldo remained at Manchester United, Robinho could not bear to continue under employers who did not believe in him fully, so he engineered an exit. He said he wanted to go somewhere he could be one of the world’s best players.

With six goals in seven league games for Manchester City (Robinho’s website proudly published charts to demonstrate that this is the best strike rate of any player in England) he has done a good job of banishing doubts. However, only one of those goals came away from home, from the penalty spot at Newcastle. He has not been an influential performer away from Eastlands - an important reason why City’s league record on the road since his arrival reads played three, lost two, drawn one.

The windy, chilly Reebok stadium today, against a feisty, desperate Bolton, would be a fine place for Robinho to demonstrate that he is more than a fair weather superstar. His victims argue that in the right form and frame of mind, he is unplayable. “You can’t set up a team to stop players like him,” said Tony Pulis, Stoke City’s manager. “With great players like that, you’ve got to hope and pray it’s not their day. Irrespective of what you do, they will have their moments during a game and you just hope their moments don’t lead to goals. Unfortunately, when we played City, he had one of those days.

“He’s got great balance, great football awareness, he understands the game and he’s going to be a great player for them. I’ve read he wants to score 30 goals this season. [City manager] Mark Hughes will be chuffed to beans to hear he’s setting those targets.”

Against Stoke, Robinho looked like a 30-a-season player. His hat-trick resulted from a virtuoso demonstration of modern forward play. It is fitting that his fate became linked with Ronaldo’s. Like Ronaldo, Robinho is feted for his tricks and dribbling, but, also like the Portuguese, it may be his work when he has not got the ball that does most to make him valuable. Ronaldo has perfected the art of playing as the “wide second striker”, using a starting position on the flank to conceal that his true purpose is the scoring rather than creating of goals, judging the right moment to steal, via the side door, into the box to polish off moves.

Robinho does it too. Goal one versus Stoke involved him coming inside from the left wing to arrive in the area and collect a Ched Evans pass. Goal two saw the Brazilian adopting the central striker’s position on a counter-attack and making an angled run between defenders to meet a Daniel Sturridge through ball. Goal three found him again materialising in the box, after making a run from a starting point on the right.

“I play against Robinho . . . that’s hard,” said Stoke defender Abdoulaye Faye, grinning and shaking his head. “He’s a guy who goes everywhere. You don’t know where he’ll go - left, right, you can’t mark him. There’s not much you can do as a defender. You don’t see him, you know? [Emmanuel] Adebayor is the best striker in England, but Robinho is maybe the best player I have played against this year.”

Pulis also thinks Arsenal when considering his team’s assassin: “It’s movement that makes Robinho a top player. He causes you problems because he moves around, he doesn’t sit in one slot, he keeps moving around the pitch to find little pockets of space. It’s a continental thing and Arsenal’s players do it brilliantly. They’ll come off the line and find little pockets where players are not comfortable defending.”

Real painted Robinho as a prima donna when he insisted on leaving them, but at City he is one of the lads. The celebration for the second of his Stoke goals was almost as impressive as the strike: Robinho knelt, took Sturridge’s foot and pretended to shine his boot, a humble, humorous gesture.

“What I like best about him is he is not just in it for himself,” said City goalkeeper Joe Hart. “He tries to involve himself with the squad and the people around the club. He doesn’t stick to one group, he likes to chat to everybody. That tells me he’s in it for the long haul. He is committed to the cause and he has an enthusiasm that rubs off on the other players.”

On the pitch “there are times when the things he does with the ball can make you look silly”, Hart added. “I can understand why the other keepers would be wary of him - I am, and that’s only in training.”

The Robinho effect

PREMIER LEAGUE GOALS PER GAME 2008-09
1 Robinho Man City 0.86
2 Fernando Torres Liverpool 0.83
3 Amr Zaki Wigan Athletic 0.70
4 Cristiano Ronaldo Manchester United 0.67
5 Gabriel Agbonlahor Aston Villa 0.60

- Robinho has scored six goals in seven games at a rate of 0.86 per game, the best ratio this season. The Brazilian scores a goal every 103 minutes on average, the third best ratio behind Fernando Torres and Salomon Kalou this season

- Despite missing the first four games, he has already had the most shots on target in the Premier League (16). His passing accuracy (88%) is also way above the league average of 78% although there is room for improvement in his dribbling. A 42% success rate is below the league average of 47%

- Robinho is feted for his ball skills but his running off the ball is also crucial. His second goal against Stoke demonstrated his deadly movement.