If these supposed rumours of what happened are true (a big if as it seems very uncharacteristic of sterling) and he’s just walked up to him unprovoked and grabbed his neck you can’t really have any complaints with the punishment and if anything sterling has got off lightly. We all hate scousers but you can’t do that.
however, If the matter was deemed closed by all involved as also suggested by the same rumours then why let the story out to the public? all its going to do is cause a media storm around it, every question to Southgate, Gomez, sterling and likely any player put forward for interview this next week is going to be centred around sniffing for details and reactions to this.
And if they deemed it bad enough to punish him and release details knowing full well it’s hanging him out to dry then why the hell haven’t they sent him home too? You can’t say “oh you’ve done this bad thing so we’re going to punish you by dropping you, tell the press about it but we still need you to stay here because we might need you next week if we fuck up without you”
The rights and wrongs of the incident itself are up for debate whilst we don’t know the actual story but what isn’t debatable is it’s an absolutely colossal fuck up by the PR/media team.
also not sure why southgates getting so much blame, I very much doubt he’s the one that’s decided to let this out to the public.