England player leaked Sterling-Gomez bust-up story – Lescott

Joleon Lescott thinks it has to be an England team-mate that leaked the news of Raheem Sterling and Joe Gomez’s bust-up to the newspapers.

England boss Gareth Southgate acted decisively after Sterling became involved in an altercation with Liverpool’s Gomez at St George’s Park, standing the forward down from Thursday’s Euro 2020 qualifier against Montenegro, the national side’s 1,000th match.

There has been plenty of debate about the incident – which had its origins 24 hours earlier when the players clashed during a top-of-the-table Premier League clash at Anfield – with some supporting Southgate’s action and others deeming it harsh.

And there is some confusion from inside the camp as to how the media found out about the story in the first place with Lescott presuming it must have come from one of Sterling’s England team-mates.

“That’s more disappointing, the fact that the detail of the story is getting out before anyone’s kind of made a statement,” Lescott told The Debate.

“The fact that the people in the squad, because I doubt there’s catering staff being able to kind of find connections to the media links in order to get this story out, so it’s got to be one of the players and that’s disappointing to think that one of your peers and one of your squad members are leaking this kind of story with so much detail.”