It is the training exercise that helped transform Raheem Sterling from a pacey winger who barely reached double figures every season into a sniper who became one of Europe’s most lethal goalscorers.
The change came in the 2017-18 season, when Pep Guardiola was runner-up at Manchester City. The club Sterling plays against on Sunday is now an Arsenal player.
It is Sterling’s current manager, Mikel Arteta, Guardiola’s assistant from 2016 until 2019, when he moved to the Emirates, who played a key role in bringing about that stunning efficiency in front of goal.
Guardiola had assistants who were more experienced than Arteta, who was in his first coaching role, so he could focus on specialisms and learn from as many departments as possible.
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He continued to find himself drawn to analysis, with his curiosity leading him down many a rabbit hole. His need to understand specific moments in the game at a granular level helped focus the work of Arteta and the analyst team, but it also ensured that their research became part of the first-team decision-making process.
They worked on several projects that led to major improvements: penalty kick tactics for goalkeepers, the diagonal pass from defender to winger that Ben White and Bukayo Saka perfected, and quantifying what makes a player a ‘penalty box predator’.
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Arteta began by looking at wingers around the world, using data to find the sweet spot. He and the team of analysts broke it down in which area these wingers scored the most, how often they touched the ball and how quickly a shot had to be taken.
The higher the level, the less time and space players have to shoot. Zones were also identified where most goals are assisted and scored.
This led to a youth academy exercise, which Arteta adapted and introduced into the first-team environment for Sterling to run.
Arteta has tweaked a training exercise at City to improve Sterling as a winger (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
Guardiola’s fitness coach Lorenzo Buenaventura has been praised for ensuring City train the way they play by making sessions match-realistic. Once again, the club’s research has informed their thinking, as they discovered that fast breaks required much longer sprints than would normally be associated with counter-attack training, so Buenaventura implemented a 60-yard sprint at the start of the drill.
Sterling then had to shoot within a certain square under pressure from the defenders, but due to the sprint they already had too little oxygen in their brains by the time they got there, which made decision-making difficult.
Arteta wore a stopwatch during the drill and if the shot wasn’t taken within the allotted time he would call it dead and they would start again. The emphasis was on the need to be decisive, not overcomplicated, which those familiar with Sterling’s development at City say was the most important lesson he learned.
With little time to train due to the relentless schedule, these post-training sessions were key to getting the message across. Video work helped too, with clips of wingers such as Arjen Robben and Franck Ribéry, who Guardiola worked with at Bayern Munich, used in conjunction with the 16 cameras on the training ground to show exactly what they were aiming for.
Clips of Ribery and Robben, who played with Guardiola at Bayern, helped explain what they wanted from Sterling (JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images)
Sterling arrived in 2015 as a 20-year-old and had electrified Anfield with his dribbling as part of Brendan Rodgers’ team that came close to winning the Premier League in 2013-14. Manuel Pellegrini was the manager, but when Guardiola arrived a year later something had to change in his game or he wouldn’t fit into his system.
As evidenced by the change in Jack Grealish’s game since his move from Aston Villa in 2021, Guardiola expects his wingers to adapt to the team structure more than some other managers.
One of the principles Guardiola introduced at City was the need to always look for the free man in possession. To do this, a player had to understand when they were in a clear one-on-one situation. If that was the case, they were encouraged to be aggressive and tackle their man, but if they were doubled up, logic dictated that a team-mate should be free elsewhere.
Sterling scored 10 goals and 15 assists in all competitions in 2016-17. It was a healthy return for a young player. He had 11 and nine in 2014-15, and 11 and eight in 2015-16.
But it wasn’t elite level, and neither was Leroy Sané’s tally of nine goals and five assists in his debut season after joining from Schalke. When Arteta began to work more with the attackers in that second season, it unlocked numbers that had previously been out of reach for players who delighted but often flattered to deceive.
However, success reinforces habits and that is why Sterling was so susceptible to watering down some of his natural game in his quest to make a difference.
It was almost comical how many of his goals were scored from the same location. But this was no coincidence, it was Guardiola’s design.
The most powerful assist zone was identified as the byline area inside the penalty area. City worked tirelessly to find their wingers in that position, and if one was there, the other would be on the other side, ready for the cutback or to tap the square ball across the goal.
In 2017-18, Sterling scored 23 goals and provided 14 assists. His shot conversion rate almost doubled from 10.9 per cent to 20.7 per cent as City won the league with 100 points – a total no other team has achieved.
The following season he scored 25 goals and provided 14 assists. In Arteta’s final season at City (he left for Arsenal in December 2019), Sterling scored his career-high 31 goals.
Sterling record with Arteta
His numbers dipped slightly over the next two seasons, although he still scored in double figures, before moving to Chelsea. His struggles there are no surprise when you consider the stability and structure of Guardiola’s football.
It was the perfect platform, while Chelsea had adopted so many different identities and such an aggressive recruitment strategy that continuity and consistency were hard to find.
After Sterling was dropped from Chelsea’s squad this summer after manager Enzo Maresca backtracked on earlier statements about his importance, he could still have cashed in tens of millions.
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When Arsenal’s sporting director Edu Gaspar presented the possibility of reuniting Arteta with his former winger, he understandably had questions. Sterling is now 29 and has achieved almost everything there is to achieve.
“When I first called him I knew within 10 seconds that we had to take him,” Arteta said earlier this month.
“That was my only question mark: what stage of his career is he in? After 10 seconds I knew, for the next questions, that we needed him here.
“He looks great. He has a lot of energy, a smile on his face and he is all in. He wants to make a point and when someone has that in their gut, you can feel it straight away. Of course, I don’t need to know anything more about his qualities and what he can bring to the team.”
The timing of Sterling’s arrival could not have been better. He had two weeks during the international break with only a handful of experienced players to refresh his muscle memory of Arteta’s methods and the principles that took his game to another level.
It’s been five years since they last worked together, and in that time they’ve both evolved. Sterling has focused on fatherhood and his religion, while Arteta is a different beast to the coach he worked with one-on-one, having seen him manage an entire squad. They’ll hope that shared maturity can make the difference against City on Sunday.
Sterling has performed well individually against his former club, scoring in both of Chelsea’s meetings with them last season. He has shown he knows how to hurt them, giving Kyle Walker a very difficult night in the 4-4 draw last November.
Arteta has previously found a way to access Sterling’s unused reserves and he hopes he can do so again.
(Top photo: Arteta and Sterling at City in 2019; Marc Atkins/Getty Images)
