Guardiola has changed Sterling: more goals and less assists

Raheem Sterling was on fire for Manchester City who had nothing to play for against Watford. The large margin of victory has made it much harder for the Hornets to stay up. 

After the match, the Englishman highlighted that he wanted to increase his goalscoring tally. That is the reason he took a penalty, for example, when the usual taker would have been Kevin De Bruyne. 

"I scored my first goal and I had 18 in total. I knew that if I scored a second goal and I played the 90 minutes, I could get a hat-trick. That wasn't to be, but I'm happ about my two goals," Sterling pointed out. 

Reaching twenty in La Liga is almost an obsession for the Englishman: "It would be very important. Scoring 20 goals in the Premier League for a winger would be a great achievement. We have another game to play, so I hope to reach it," 

And Pep Guardiola is getting Raheem Sterling to score more and assist less. 

In the image above, you can see the number of goals he has scored in all competitions in each season. The green bars are the goals he has scored and the pink ones the assists. 

His second season at Man City was an example of what we are saying. The Liverpool academy player did not go past 10 goals while he gave 16 assists, but things have started to change in the last three seasons. 

Of all his contributions in 2017-18, 36% were assists (13), while 34% were in the follow9ing one (14 and 27 goals). However, this season he has just given four assists in all competitions (12.5%) while he is keen to get to the 20 goal mark in the Premier League. He is just one away.