City snub POPE!
Stones and Co ignore Vale striker after dressing-room invite
THeRe were only two Manchester City stars willing to give Tom Pope the time of day after Port Vale were invited into the home dressing room after their FA Cup clash on Saturday.
Pope dominated the build-up to this tie after social media comments about John Stones, posted six months before the third-round draw, were found.
Stones had been labelled ‘weak as p***,’ by the lower-league striker and seemed in no mood for forgiveness when they met, blanking him in the post-match rendezvous. Most of the defender’s team-mates, bar the genial Benjamin Mendy and Oleksandr Zinchenko, also turned their backs on the Port Vale goalscorer.
‘Nobody was speaking to me,’ said Pope, 34. ‘It was like the Grim Reaper going in, they all ran the other way. I got Zinchenko’s shirt. I think that everybody else palmed me off.
‘I don’t think he (Stones) is happy. It was a little bit awkward. I spoke to Mendy and he said the lads have abused him for weeks, so I think it’s played on his mind a little bit. I shook his hand but he wasn’t too happy.
‘People have dug it up, and I didn’t mean any offence by it. It was just my opinion on something. I never tagged anybody in, it’s just because we drew Man City and everyone’s jumped on it and made it global. I wish it hadn’t.’
His manager, John Askey, wishes Pope would go easy on Twitter, although conceded that he causes himself more problems than the club.
After another light-hearted dig at Stones and mocking Scott Carson’s teeth, Pope Tweeted something altogether more serious.
Asked to ‘predict the World War III result’ in the early hours of yesterday morning, Pope replied: ‘We invade Iran then Cuba then North Korea then the Rothchilds (sic) are crowned champions of every bank on the planet.’
That Tweet was deleted within hours but around long enough for it to be documented. Pope was accused of antiSemitism and the FA are investigating.
Pope had already rowed back on comments about Stones before kick-off but, having come up against the england international for 90 minutes, went a bit further.
‘You can’t get near him,’ he admitted. ‘I mean, at the end of the day, I think I had one cross and scored one goal, but that was it. He’s just so good on the ball, he makes it look easy and it’s difficult to press them when you’ve got ten men behind the ball.
‘It’s very hard to try and have an impact, offensively, when you’ve got so many players on the edge of your own box. We were joking beforehand, saying we’d take 5-0, so to concede four is a massive bonus for us.’
Pope beat 17-year-old Taylor Harwood-Bellis to David Amoo’s cross to give everyone at Port Vale a more meaningful memento than a shirt. The veteran was full of praise for a defender half his age.
‘He was quite aggressive for a young lad,’ he added. ‘He’s not just a good footballer and I’m sure he’s going to have a very good career.
‘It’s a great learning curve for him. It’s a lot better for him doing that than playing Under-23s. You don’t really get those kind of players, so I’m sure he’ll learn and face a lot more Tom Popes.’
Port Vale now look towards an eFL Trophy tie at Salford tomorrow, while City face rivals Manchester United in the Carabao Cup semi-final first leg at
Old Trafford. Pep Guardiola will focus on stopping United breaking from midfield, which they did to such good effect at the etihad last month.
‘United is a team that is built to run,’ said Guardiola. ‘I have the feeling they are going to run as many times as possible and we have to reduce the mistakes in the build-up.’