I Was Very Self-Critical When Pep Guardiola Benched Me – Stones

Manchester City defender, John Stones has come out to explain how he fought his way back into the team after being on the fringes of the squad three years ago. He recently had his say while speaking to the press, and fans have been reacting.

According to him, he was super critical of himself when he was regularly on the bench, and that spurred him on to train and eat better to become the perfect professional for City.

Stones added that he had to find the small margins and improve his knowledge of the game to be where he is today.

His words, “It was probably one of the hardest times in my career,”

“I literally went back to firstly looking at myself, being super critical of myself and what I could do better on the football pitch, and then looking into every fine detail, down to food, what food, training, what training, what extras.”

On his growth, “It was about finding these small margins, put them all together to kind of break where I was at after coming back to playing. Big learning curve for me and maybe who I am today.”

“I think it’s not just that game. I think any game that you don’t play, or feel maybe that you should be playing, every player feels like that when they don’t play, especially here because we’ve got an incredible team, it’s always difficult,”

“I really do try and put a positive spin on that and use that to motivate me and make sure that I give the manager a headache to make his team selection.”