John Stones has opened up about his Manchester City transformation – and revealed how Micah Richards helped him. Stones has come in from the cold to form a blossoming central defensive partnership with Ruben Dias in Pep Guardiola’s side. The pair kept another clean sheet as City beat Crystal Palace 4-0 at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday night. And Stones scored twice – his first two Premier League goals for the club – to cap of a fine evening’s work. It was City’s eighth straight win in all competitions and lifted them up to second in the league table – only two points behind leaders Manchester United, with a game in hand.
John Stones said “(It feels) very good. We knew it was a tough game today, The last two years, I think, we’ve not beat them at home. So it was something that we’d worked on in the last few days. Another clean sheet, another win to keep that winning momentum going, and two goals for myself, which has been a long time. So I’m delighted. I’m just trying to keep improving as I keep saying to everyone – keep improving game by game, day by day on the training pitch, and keeping these clean sheets is massive, I keep saying it. It’s just a platform for the lads to go and express themselves up at the top of the pitch, and score the goals. We’re taking great pride in keeping the clean sheets. It’s what we’re there to do and hopefully we can keep the run going and keep as many clean sheets as we can, because we know how vital they are in big games, and game like today. And we know what will happen if we keep getting them – we keep picking up points. We don’t have to go out and score four or five goals every week. We’ve done it when it’s 1-0 and fought hard right to the 90th minute. We kind of take the credit for it at the back – but I think we’ve got to give credit to the whole team, from the top end and how the press, and stop a lot of things getting to us. It’s a collective thing.”
