Stones: From Barnsley to the Blues
The rise of City’s central defender – by the men who helped coach him
WITH a professional career that is now into its sixth decade, Kevin Reeves knows a player when he sees one.
So when the former City and England forward, in his role as chief scout at Wigan Athletic in 2013, said he’d seen a young Barnsley defender that would play for England, his bosses did not need any more convincing.
The Premier League strugglers thought they had landed the prospect in the January window, only for Roberto Martinez and assistant Graeme Jones to be left waiting at the DW Stadium to welcome the signing as he drove instead to Finch Farm to sign for Everton.
And while his change of heart may have cost him an FA Cup medal that year, it very quickly looked a wise decision. Instead of being thrust straight back into the Championship where he had come from, John Stones was lining up against Carlos Tevez’s Juventus and Cristiano Ronaldo’s Real Madrid as he prepared for his first full season in the Premier League.
If such a whirlwind start seemed fitting for a boy who had only turned 19 that May but already been tipped for greatness, one of the interesting constants in Stones’s career has been patience. As far as England were concerned, he was a late developer. His talent on the ball was undoubted but the youth team coaches with the national team were not sure whether he would turn into a centre-back, right-back, or midfielder.
When he did make his England debut, it was at Under-19 level on the right side of defence. Centrebacks Eric Dier, Adam Morgan, and most of the rest of the team including Jordan Pickford, Raheem Sterling and Nathaniel Chalobah, had been racking up international appearances from Under-16 level.
If Stones was a latecomer and outsider to that level, however, it didn’t show.
“I was fortunate to work with some very talented young boys and a lot went on to play full internationals,” explained Noel Blake, whose time in the England youth set-up saw him work with 18 of the players that would make up the 23-man World Cup squad in 2018.
“They were in competition all the way through from 16s. John wasn’t what you call outstanding but he was good enough when he came into the system and did well enough in the system for him to be invited back for another game and another game and another game, and he never looked out of place.
“He was very confident. Abilitywise there was no issue. He came into the system and there was no shock to the system or him thinking he shouldn’t be here.
“I’ve had it with other players where they’ve arrived and they’re
Pep Guardiola says Stones has everything to be a top defender holding back a bit and you put your arms around them and remind them that if they weren’t good enough they wouldn’t be here, you remind them what they’re about. But John fitted in really well.”
Five months after his England Under-19s debut, Stones’s displays for Barnsley had been enough for Everton to pinch him out of Wigan’s clutches, and six months after that Martinez and Jones had swapped the DW for Goodison to belatedly get to work with the player after a sheepish reunion.
Another waiting game followed. Sylvain Distin and Phil Jagielka were the first-choice pairing in defence and there was little reason to disrupt a team that would finish fifth – their second-best finish in the Premier League.
Stones, though, kept pushing and by the following season at 20 years old he was ready to become central to Everton’s plans. It was a big ask for such a young player to be given that amount of responsibility in a style of football that could unnerve the Gwladys Street End, yet there were no doubts from the coaching team that Stones was ready for it.
“Mentally, he was already there, he was that level. He was a very confident boy, he didn’t have any fear,” Jones told M.E.N. Sport.
“He was competent with the group, he knew how to fit in. He had the social skills which are important in any team environment but never lost track of who he was and he had huge respect from the Everton boys.
“Obviously the technical aspect of his game was immense, his composure under pressure, his mentality, nothing fazed him. The more the crowd at Goodison got unsettled, the more John wanted the ball in dangerous areas.
“Turning from a boy to a man with that development you normally get some harsh lessons along the way. In that 2014/15 season we did and John over the piece was outstanding but he definitely made mistakes in that season and that’s what you have to do in that learning process. John is a high-risk player but if you measure his mistakes over a game or over a season for the amount of times that he’s on the ball they are so very very few and he was so important for us how we wanted to play that we were prepared to roll with his mistakes.
“It cost us at times in the shortterm and in the long-term I think Pep Guardiola has benefited from it because he made his mistakes at Everton. It wasn’t that many but the ones that John does make are always going to be high risk and they’re always going to be costly because of the area of the pitch that he plays from.”
The Martinez project fizzled out in 2016 and Stones – who had handed in a transfer request the previous year to try to force a move to Chelsea – was not always on Everton lips for the right reasons after three full seasons in the team.
Guardiola, though, had seen enough. There is mutual admiration between the Catalan and Martinez – the latter’s use of Kevin de Bruyne
Every mistake that John Stones makes is magnified a million times over – but he’s got talent
Noel Blake
in a deeper role with Belgium tempted the City manager to do the same – and as he arrived from Bayern Munich he decided that Stones and another young defender called Aymeric Laporte would be the anchors in his system at the Etihad.
Just as at Everton under Martinez, being a poster boy for a system that was heavily scrutinised in English football and puts great strain on centre-backs was not easy for Stones in a first season where Guardiola failed to win a trophy for the first time in his managerial career. Leicester away was a lowlight but a 4-0 defeat at Goodison also felt like a nadir.
Through it all, the manager professed not one shred of doubt in the defender and famously declared he had more balls than anyone in the room, gesticulating to really make his point.
Stones was outstanding in the first half of the 2017/18 campaign under Nicolas Otamendi and followed that up with a starring role in England’s run to the World Cup semi-finals.
Those who have seen him develop over time reference how grounded he has remained, and Jones – working for Belgium with Martinez during that tournament – was humbled after the third-place play-off when Stones came into the opposition dressing room after the game to seek the coach out and give him his shirt.
The defender has become in danger of being grounded at City since that high, however. More patience has been required on both sides as a combination of form and injuries have seen him lose a regular place in the starting XI. Laporte and Vincent Kompany proved immovable in the 2018/19 run-in, yet in their absence this season nobody has stepped up. Guardiola still insists that Stones has everything to be a top defender – “It’s in his hands and in his head to become one of the best,” he said in January – but the stalling in his progression has led to uncertainty around his future at the club and links to a move to another Premier League club.
Has a player that will turn 26 at the end of next month developed into the figure that those who worked with him as a teenager expected?
“From a technical point of view, yes,” says Blake.
“I know the way City play but I would love to see him make a few more what I would call proper football tackles – purely because he has got that in him.
“Every mistake John Stones makes is magnified a million times over but he’s got talent. There’s no question about that in my mind and he’s still young – people forget that.”
For Jones, success may have helped transform Stones’s game but motivation will be key to rising to Guardiola’s challenge and prolonging his career at the highest level for another decade.
“He’s getting pushed by the best at the minute. After Pep Guardiola it doesn’t get a lot better. It’s how stimulated you can keep him, how hungry you can keep him. In terms of improvement and winning things, that drug has got to be there for him until he’s 35, until his legs won’t move any more because the only thing that matters is playing.”
If Stones can find the right blend of confidence, talent, and patience that have seen him achieve what he already has in the game, there is room for him to thrive still at Guardiola’s City.