Rodgers praying his mentoring of City star Sterling doesn’t come back to haunt him
and he got a £49m move. Then he sort of drifted really and maybe lost his identity of what he was as a player.
“But I never had issues with him. Yes, there was a moment where we were making a point to him early on but that was it really.
“He had a personality but he could accept that and hopefully if you speak to him we had a really close relationship.
“A lot of things when he left were naughty really, that were being said. The kid had been round at my house having a meal or playing with his daughter and my family, you know?
“There were things being instigated trying to get him to move. Lots of things that were not right and the final straw was that he had fallen out with the manager but that was never
Rodgers said: “I know the people well there. I was approached after Roberto’s first season there to go in and be a No.2 and at that time I was out of work.
“They thought because I had worked at Chelsea with the big players that I could maybe come in and make an impact there but after the talks I was offered the job at Swansea.
“I got to know about the club in those discussions and I have to say I’m big admirer because of everything they talked about – they genuinely have a project there.
“They want to win but the plan was also about developing the community and everything around it.
“If you haven’t gone down there, when you go down there for our game, you’ll see how impressive it is, the area around the stadium and everything they have put in place.
“I’ve always seen what they do as being more than just about the money. Of course, the big clubs it’s about winning and to do that they need to spend to get success very quickly.”
Arguably their biggest and best investment over the summer came with the arrival of former Barcelona and Bayern Munich manager Guardiola – and Rodgers has seen an instant impact.
He said: “They’ve always had good players but they’ve never been as dynamic and probably ruthless as this. I’ve managed teams against them home and away but they haven’t been playing like this.
“So we are coming across a real machine that has started the season very well, very brightly with top-class players. But we’re at home, we’ll look to learn from our last experience and certainly we won’t be as passive as we were in the last game.”