John Stones, Manchester City’s £47.5 million defender, suffered a torrid time throughout his side’s 4-2 Premier League defeat by Leicester City.
Social networking site Twitter can be an unforgiving platform – and there was no hiding place for Manchester City’s central defender John Stones after his poor Premier League showing against Leicester City.
Stones was signed in the summer for an enormous transfer fee, with the impression that the former Everton man would be the Rolls Royce of City’s philosophy revolution under Pep Guardiola.
Indeed, earlier this season Guardiola himself described the 22-year-old as England’s answer to Ronald Koeman – Guardiola’s teammate at Barcelona in the early 1990s.
However, Stones’ display against Leicester left a lot to be desired.
The second most expensive defender of all time was seemingly obsessed with playing the ball out from the back, with little regard for whatever circumstance Stones found himself in. That usually consisted of pressure from the likes of Jamie Vardy, Riyad Mahrez and Islam Slimani, with little time or space.
Against Leicester, Stones showed very few signs of an ability to organise a back line, limited leadership qualities and he presented mistake after mistake on the ball – culminating in Vardy’s hat-trick and Leicester’s fourth goal. Stones blindly played a pass back to the similarly poor Claudio Bravo in the City goal, which Vardy intercepted before rounding Bravo and slotting home from a tight angle.
After the game, observers of Stones’ performance took to Twitter to express their thoughts on the England star’s showing.
Here is a taste of the reaction:
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