Football
ESPN staff 8y

Pellegrini defends Man City's Raheem Sterling after Capital One Cup win

Manuel Pellegrini defended his Manchester City winger Raheem Sterling who had a poor outing in his side's Capital One Cup final victory against Liverpool.

The blue half of Manchester celebrated a 3-1 penalty shootout win over Liverpool after the teams finished normal time with a 1-1 score line courtesy of goals from City's Fernandinho and Reds midfielder Philippe Coutinho.

Facing his old club at Wembley Stadium, Sterling had a golden opportunity on the hour mark to give his side a two-goal lead but managed to put the ball out instead of scoring against Simon Mignolet.

Despite his poor performance, Pellegrini had words of encouragement for his 21-year-old England winger whom he felt will be "a very important player [for City] for a lot of years."

"I don't want to analyse individual performances but I understand how Raheem felt," he told Omnisport.

"It's not easy just for Raheem as a very young player, it's not easy for every player with more experience to play against your former team and he has a lot of friends.

"But Raheem took a very important decision at the beginning of the season. He wanted to come here to win titles and I'm very happy for him that he won already.

"I think he will be a very important player for a lot of years, so he will continue winning a lot of titles also."

One other player who Pellegrini had nothing but praise for, was England goalkeeper Joe Hart, who watched from the bench as Willy Caballero provided a man-of-the-match performance in between the sticks.

"I'm very happy also for Joe Hart because he demonstrated tonight that he's not only a very good player, a very good goalkeeper, he's also a very good person," said the Chilean.

"He was also supporting and shouting before the game in the dressing room. I'm very proud about the squad that I manage."

The Capital One Cup win will give City the perfect platform to mount a late charge for the Premier League title, where they currently sit in fourth spot, nine points behind leaders Leicester City with a game in hand.

Their next league outing will be on March 3 away to their cup final rivals Liverpool at Anfield.

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