'He killed my confidence' - the players who turned on Pep Guardiola after leaving Man City

Aymeric Laporte this week made headlines for questioning Pep Guardiola's transfer policy at Manchester City. It felt like the first time a player has openly gone against the manager.

There have been times where a player has respectfully offered a different opinion to Guardiola - mainly over playing time. Raheem Sterling said it was a 'massive surprise' that he saw a drop in minutes: “Me and the manager and the people at the club know exactly what the reasons were. I tried to play my football and overcome the situation but it couldn’t be done so I had to move on."

Players like Joe Hart and Eliaquim Mangala have spoken about Guardiola's professionalism while informing them that they had no future at City, and others like Leroy Sane or Joao Cancelo have had to set the record straight over rumours of a falling out that led to their exits. There are, however, times when a player - past or present - takes the bold move of calling out the best manager in the world - in a similar way to Laporte this week.

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Discussing Guardiola's well-known stance that unhappy players can leave if they want to and there is an acceptable offer, Laporte said: "That's what he usually says. For several players it wasn't like that, but I'm not going to go into that type of things. I decided to leave and I was able to leave. That's it."

Laporte also cited his move to left-back and loss of a regular starting spot as reasons for his summer exit, saying: "I had been playing for two years in a place that was not the position that I did not want to play. When a year, two years goes by and you do