{"id":589195,"date":"2021-04-16T17:21:45","date_gmt":"2021-04-16T21:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=589195"},"modified":"2021-04-16T17:21:45","modified_gmt":"2021-04-16T21:21:45","slug":"sterling-pep-guardiola","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2021\/04\/16\/sterling-pep-guardiola\/","title":{"rendered":"Raheem Sterling and Pep Guardiola &#8216;Bust-up&#8217; Reason for Lack of Minutes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Raheem Sterling and Pep Guardiola have had a &#8216;fairly sizeable bust-up&#8217;, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SamLee\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sam Lee<\/a> of The Athletic, resulting in a lack of minutes for the winger<\/p>\n<h2>Sterling and Pep Guardiola &#8216;Bust-up&#8217; Cause of Limited Minutes<\/h2>\n<h3>Sterling and Guardiola Dispute Came After Southampton Game in March<\/h3>\n<p>Speaking to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=oyc45jQgRZU\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">OTBSports<\/a>, Lee explained that Sterling was dropped after a poor performance against <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2021\/01\/19\/wonderkid-joao-pedro-verbally-commits-future-to-watford\/\" target=\"_self\">Manchester United<\/a> and did not react well in his manager&#8217;s eyes.<\/p>\n<p>Rumours circulated of an argument between the two, which were far-fetched and swiftly denied on Twitter by Sterling.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Some crazy rumours on socials today&#8230; That&#8217;s absolutely FALSE. Looking forward to a big week with the team. Have a good night lads \ud83d\ude4c\ud83c\udffe<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Raheem Sterling (@sterling7) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/sterling7\/status\/1371182976671887364?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 14, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\nAlthough the rumours about the incident weren&#8217;t true, there was a dispute between the two, Lee explained: &#8220;Someone did a spoof of those rumours [of the bust-up] that were so ridiculous Sterling then went on Twitter [to deny them].<\/p>\n<p>As far as I know, there was a row with Guardiola before that Southampton game. He was left out of the team. He wasn&#8217;t very happy about it. Guardiola sent one of his little coded messages after the Southampton game&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Sterling seemingly failed to improve the situation with his manager in time for City&#8217;s next match against Fulham. On Sterling&#8217;s omission from that game, Lee said: &#8220;Pretty obvious from [Guardiola&#8217;s] answers after the game that something had gone on and there was a reason he was left back in Manchester. He came on in the Borussia Monchengladbach game, but he didn&#8217;t start that either.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Since then he&#8217;s had opportunities to get back into the team. Maybe [he is still missing out] because of the performances, missing a few chances and being quite wasteful on the ball, and because of his reaction to being dropped. You can&#8217;t do that under Guardiola &#8211; if you lose out on the team you get your head down and work hard.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h3>Sterling Faces &#8216;Challenge&#8217; After &#8216;Bust-up&#8217;<\/h3>\n<p>On the significance of this argument, Lee said: &#8220;It was a fairly sizeable bust-up, I think. No huge, because he&#8217;s come back and he&#8217;s played. The fact that he was left out altogether against Fulham is normally one of the Pep warning shots. He left out Sane, he left out Mahrez a couple of times for similar [incidents]. I think Sterling&#8217;s reaction may have been a little more angry.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Earlier in the season, Laporte didn&#8217;t take too kindly to being left out of the team either. He was rehabilitated back into the team. He got his chances. That&#8217;s the challenge for Sterling.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The 26-year-old will likely be eager to be involved in tomorrow&#8217;s FA Cup semi-final against <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2021\/01\/27\/thomas-tuchel-will-succeed-at-chelsea\/\" target=\"_self\">Chelsea<\/a>, as several crucial games lie ahead for City. While players such as Laporte and Mahrez have been reintegrated with the team after disputes with Guardiola, Leroy Sane&#8217;s departure serves as an example of how things can go sour when the Spaniard falls out with players.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo<br \/>\n<a id=\"SBeVs_xzR6BT4qE6zE1mdQ\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.co.uk\/detail\/1302689540\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'SBeVs_xzR6BT4qE6zE1mdQ',sig:'tbY6JfFMETX9H_zg1sIDbR8si8no0EhEmWTF-CAWYTE=',w:'594px',h:'362px',items:'1302689540',caption: true ,tld:'co.uk',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Raheem Sterling and Pep Guardiola have had a &#8216;fairly sizeable bust-up&#8217;, according to Sam Lee of The Athletic, resulting in a lack of minutes for the winger Sterling and Pep Guardiola &#8216;Bust-up&#8217; Cause of Limited Minutes Sterling and Guardiola Dispute Came After Southampton Game in March Speaking to OTBSports, Lee explained that Sterling was dropped [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3798,"featured_media":589228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,17,30],"tags":[100,181,386],"class_list":["post-589195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-premier-league","category-manchester-city","category-news","tag-manchester-city","tag-pep-guardiola","tag-raheem-sterling"],"modified_by":"Tom Cunningham, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3798"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}