Tbh, I don’t see what Pep sees in him. He’s not a Pep player, because he is the most technically inferior player on the team.
His assets are speed and strength, but his weaknesses are technique and speed of thought.
The former are great, but often wasted without the latter.
I agree that he’s great at wriggling into the box, but half the time the ball isn’t under control and no-one, including himself I believe, knows what end product to expect.
On the penalty, he had lost touch control of the ball and it was only his shielding with his right leg, and the defender’s stupidity that created anything out of it. Had the defender stood up, the ball would have just run out of play.
On the keeper’s mistake, I’m not sure anyone was confident he’d put it away. Even Pep had his head in his hands when he put it at a perfect height for the keeper to save.
He seems like a great lad. He plays with a smile on his face and soldiers on, even when it’s not going his way. My problem is that he feels like he reached a peak in his development and simply never matured past the head down and run with the ball under a semblance of control.
His best days at City are getting down the right wing and getting on the end of balls slotted in from the left. When he plays on the left, you get neither. He almost got on the end of a cross from the right, when the keeper got a hand on it and Cancelo followed up with a shot over the top, but (as many others have said) he is a very poor judge of when to pull the trigger, esp when he does play on the left and cuts in on his right.
He has scored a few, I’ll grant him that, but he feels like a roving second striker with no striker to play off when playing centrally, and Mahrez is just better than him on the right wing….and Foden is better than him on the left!
With Palmer, McAtee and Delap already coming through, Alvarez (and Kayky?) looking like striking options, it’s hard to see paying £350,000/week on Sterling when you probably get all FIVE of them for less!