Mourinho: Nasty challenge by Sterling deserved straight red

JOSE MOURINHO slammed VAR last night for ruling that Raheem Sterling did not deserve a straight red card for his reckless tackle on Dele Alli in the first half. The Manchester City star caught his England team-mate on the right ankle, which left Alli requiring lengthy treatment. He was substituted in the second half as a result of the damage caused by the tackle. Mourinho was waiting last night to discover the extent of the damage. The challenge was referred to VAR but Sterling’s yellow card was not upgraded to a red. After the game, the Tottenham boss said: ‘When the VAR decides not to give a red card to Sterling it was thinking about the globality of the game. They decided to go against the rules of the game to favour the spectacle. ‘For the majority of the game it was 11 v 11 but it should have been 11 against 10 since that very, very nasty tackle from Sterling on Dele Alli. ‘City were very lucky. If

Crunch: Sterling catches Alli’s ankle in the first half Sterling had been out after a few minutes, there are more chances for us. ‘I know that Mike Dean has a difficult job. He’s on the pitch and it’s 200 miles an hour. I wouldn’t like to be a referee because it’s so difficult.’ Mourinho was full of praise for debutant Steven Bergwijn, who struck a fine effort to break the deadlock. ‘It was a debut goal that was the icing on the cake of a very good performance,’ he said of Bergwijn, who joined from PSV Eindhoven on Wednesday. ‘Independent of the goal I would say his performance was very solid, very mature. We worked hard in the week.’

Pep Guardiola, meanwhile, took to a thinly-veiled swipe at a former Premier League chairman c Richard Scudamore, S who expressed e concerns ahead of last season that City’s dominance could affect a the division’s credibility c after they had h won the title by 19 points p in the previous campaign. ‘The last two seasons they said s City winning the title was bad b for the Premier League and that it could not happen again,’ said the City boss. ‘They said someone has to stop City getting 100 points and winning it again. ‘So now it is Liverpool you have to be concerned with about the Premier League.’ Guardiola locked his players in the dressing room for nearly an hour and conceded defeat in the title race following this loss. City are 22 points adrift of Liverpool. Guardiola: ‘They are far away, so they are unstoppable. They have a lot of points, we have dropped points quite similar to today. Our targets are to win the remaining competitions and qualify for the Champions League next season.’