City’s flying winger is defender’s special Wan
UNITED MAN NAMES STERLING AS HIS TOUGHEST OPPONENT
AARON Wan-Bissaka meant it as a compliment.
Asked for his toughest opponent at United, the defender’s defender picked Raheem Sterling.
City’s forward has increasingly become a nightmare for full-backs who have been unable to deal with his pinpoint runs and excellent finishing, and Sterling vs Wan-Bissaka has been an almighty tussle played out over four times this season.
If picking him out shows the quality of Sterling though, the results tell a different story.
City have only won one of four derbies this year, scoring just four goals and three of those came in the first half of the League Cup semi-final at Old Trafford.
There, as Pep Guardiola bamboozled Ole Gunnar Solskjaer with two false nines, Sterling could be said to have won his personal battle. But he still failed to score, and on every other occasion it was the younger man who came out on top.
For someone like Sterling, that matters.
The 25-year-old has ambition to test himself and score goals at the very top level. It is why Real Madrid has been mentioned as a potential move and, however unlikely it may be, champions-elect Liverpool.
But it is also why he came to City, a team that have won the last two Premier League titles with record points tallies and who went to the Bernabeu and won this season to enhance their Champions League credentials before the season was brought to a sudden halt.
Records and targets matter to Sterling,
and he has unfinished business still at the Etihad.
The drying up of goals in 2020 has seen him overtaken by Sergio Aguero when it looked during the first half of the season like he would end the Argentine’s reign as the annual top scorer at the club.
And for all of Wan-Bissaka’s good intentions, his comments unintentionally recall the long barren run that Sterling has against United stretching
1326 minutes and 17 appearances.
Sterling admitted before the first of this season’s derbies that the record bothered him, and his misses in the subsequent games will only have added to that frustration. City have Sterling tied down to a contract until 2023 and yet cannot expect him to finish his career at the Etihad given the ambition he still holds for different challenges. As much as the Premier League and Champions League remain the ultimate goals, that also means ending his poor run against City’s biggest rivals and enhancing his scoring record so that Wan-Bissaka and more right-backs continue to view him as the toughest in the league.
Sterling admitted before the first derby this season that his record bothered him Joe Bray