Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has dismissed reports of him falling out with Raheem Sterling.
The rumours stem from Sterling not being selected for the win over Fulham just days after being left on the bench against Southampton. From this, media and fans alike began to formulate an idea of what had happened.
Alas, it seems to come down to little more than Guardiola working with the squad he’s got given the demands of competing on four separate fronts this season.
Guardiola’s immediate rebuttal
The boss spoke about the situation in his pre-Monchengladbach press conference after Sterling made a statement of his own on social media.
Some crazy rumours on socials today… That's absolutely FALSE. Looking forward to a big week with the team. Have a good night lads ??
— Raheem Sterling (@sterling7) March 14, 2021
“Raheem and all the players always train and react very well. I don’t expect the guys who are not selected are happy. It is normal.” Pep explained.
“It has happened since football was created. Raheem in this case has been so important and is so important.
“All the players respect my decisions. I never found in my career one player who was happy when they don’t play, but they react and behave really well.”
Guardiola went on to mention Sterling’s above Twitter comments on the matter.
“He doesn’t need to do it – nothing happened,” he said. “He was not selected, that’s all. Sometimes during the season, for example when we travelled to Stamford Bridge, we had 14 first team players and then it is easy to make the selection and everybody is happy.
“When you have 20 top-class players who have had incredible success, it will always be unfair on them. That is the point.”
Given City and Sterling’s overwhelming success this season we find it hard to believe there’s any kind of rift here, especially given the close proximity of fixtures.
Featured image credit: Getty
