Rio Ferdinand reckons Man Utd or Liverpool should sign Man City winger Raheem Sterling now that he’s out “in the wilderness”.
The England international has only started two of City’s six matches in all competitions so far this season with Pep Guardiola preferring others in attack.
Sterling started at the weekend as the Citizens were held to a 0-0 draw at home by Southampton in a poor display from Guardiola’s men.
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The fact Sterling was a surprise inclusion in City’s Champions League final defeat against Chelsea at the end of last season shows how far his stock has fallen recently.
A report on Saturday claimed that Barcelona are interested in taking him to the Camp Nou on loan in the January transfer window.
And former Man Utd defender Ferdinand is “baffled” by Sterling’s fall from grace under Guardiola.
“Where is Raheem Sterling? He’s lost confidence because he’s been taken out of the team,” Ferdinand said.
“He was the go-to guy when they needed a goal, for so many years, and now all of a sudden he’s in the wilderness.
“I’m baffled by it, I just don’t understand. With Pep, he gets things right more often than not, but with this one there must be clubs sitting there going ‘let’s see how this pans out because I would take Sterling all day!”
Ferdinand reckons Liverpool and Man Utd should be monitoring his situation in case they can swoop in the January market.
He added: “If I’m Liverpool, I’d buy Sterling tomorrow … If I’m him, I wouldn’t go to Barcelona or Real Madrid right now, that’s why I said Liverpool … Man United will take him!”
Man City face Wycombe in the Carabao Cup tonight at the Etihad Stadium and Guardiola has hinted at some major rotation.
“Now we are going to play the Carabao Cup,” Guardiola said. “We are going to see how many people recover for the next days because we are in difficult conditions right now but we will go there to London, Paris and Liverpool to do good games absolutely.
“Football depends a lot on how well we do our process in the build-up and when that happens the strikers play better, our wingers play better and our attacking midfielders play better.
“Against Southampton we struggled a little bit for that. They know it exactly. Sometimes the opponent plays well and If you analyse why we didn’t create chances against Southampton, it was for that reason.”