Abu Dhabi: Kevin Keegan, the former Manchester City manager, has warned Raheem Sterling there is no guarantee that new Blues boss Pep Guardiola can revive his ailing fortunes and that the onus is on the 21-year-old to improve his consistency.
Keegan claims Sterling did not have one “outstanding” game for City after becoming the club’s second-most expensive signing last summer when he joined from Liverpool for 49 million pounds (Dh233 million).
The former England captain and manager also said Sterling’s low confidence and poor form had continued with England at Euro 2016, where he was widely pilloried for his erratic displays in an ignominious Three Lions’ campaign that ended with a 2-1 defeat to Iceland in the last 16.
Sterling’s travails in France reportedly resulted in Guardiola calling him during the tournament to say: “As long as you work for me, I’ll fight for you. Keep your head up, don’t worry, I know you’re a good player and you are a big part of my plans.”
At his first press conference as City manager last Friday, Guardiola reiterated his faith in Sterling by declaring: “The problem is recovering confidence when a player has no quality, that is a big problem. Then I cannot help him.
“But Sterling has the quality. He just has to focus on his life, his profession and I’m pretty sure he will play good.”
Does former Liverpool star Keegan, who managed City between 2001 and 2005, think the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich coach Guardiola can revitalise Sterling?
“We’ll have to wait and see,” Keegan, a pundit with Qatar-based beIN Sports, which exclusively covers the Premier League in the Mena region, told Gulf News. “There’s a better player in there than Man City fans have seen. Liverpool fans certainly got a lot of great performances from him in a Liverpool shirt. In loads of games for Liverpool, he was outstanding.
“I can’t think of him doing that in a Man City shirt. Maybe Pep Guardiola, the way he puts the team together and the way he asks them to play, might suit Raheem Sterling better or he might find himself not even in the team.
“You don’t know, do you?
“Raheem Sterling has shown he has the potential, he’s now got to find consistency. That’s the next stage for him: to do it every week, not now and again.”
Keegan added that expectations have possibly been too high on the “inexperienced” Sterling, despite his coruscating performances for the Reds.
“He’s young and people expect a lot. If you go back over a year to how he was playing at Liverpool, he was a very exciting young player, running at people and scaring them to death with his pace.
“We’ve not seen that for 12 months and he went into the Euros lacking confidence and that’s a huge thing in a young player. You feel good, you feel fit and strong and when you have good games, you feel like you can do that every day when you’re young.
“Then your world slows down and it collapses around you. His lack of experience doesn’t help in finding a way out of that [poor form] and he’s got to find a way out of that.
“Just because he cost a lot of money doesn’t mean to say he’s experienced.”
