Chelsea coach Thomas Tuchel uses Pep Guardiola playbook to tempt Man City star Raheem Sterling

28.06.2022 - 14:07 / manchestereveningnews.co.uk

An underwhelming first season with Manchester City turned into a nightmare over the summer of 2016 for Raheem Sterling as a player already disliked by much of the country used him as the figurehead of their anger at a disastrous Euro 2016 for the England team.

Sterling's decision to leave Liverpool - one of the powerhouses of English football - a year earlier for the upstarts to the top table saw him wrongly painted as a misguided moneygrabber, and all sorts of claims and predictions were made (Jordan Ibe, anyone?) that those who spouted them should be embarrassed by. City thought £49m was a bargain for the forward back then, and so it has proven.

Nevertheless, it wasn't clear that that would be the case after his first year came under Manuel Pellegrini's final season at the club where the sense of drift was overwhelming as everybody prepared for the arrival of Guardiola that summer. Not that the City manager promised good news for all.

Read more:Chelsea make private Man City request to speed up Raheem Sterling transfer

An England teammate of Sterling was Joe Hart, who had been one of City's best players for years but would be bombed out of the club before September. There was good reason for all City stars to have concerns about what was to come, not least one subject to untold abuse from 'fans' of the national team.

However, while Sterling was away in the mire with England he received a call from Guardiola. The Catalan had not yet met his players but wanted to reach out in a difficult time to personally reassure him of his place in the manager's future plans for City.

So it has worked out. Despite a few blips along the way, the boy from Brent became just the third player after Lionel Messi and Sergio Aguero to