Ex-teammate says Balotelli was always late & racked up £150k in fines at City

Micah Richards has given an insight into the fining system used at Manchester City during his time there and how Mario Balotelli used to rack them up.

Internal punishments have been in the news in recent weeks after Chelsea's fines list under manager Frank Lampard was exclusively revealed by Sportsmail, with a huge £20,000 fine for lateness to training.

And Richards, who had a role to play in collecting the fines as City's vice-captain, has explained how Italian striker Balotelli ended up contributing heavily to the pot.

Asked about the massive fine for being late to training, Richards said it was a bit steep before telling BBC Radio 5Live: 'Everything else seems to be within sync. Balotelli was always late.

'We used to give all of our money to charities and by Christmas time we'd have £100,000 or £150,000 in there all from Balotelli being late.

'He would be in the building. Say we had a meeting upstairs - he'd be downstairs just relaxing. He'd come to the meeting but he was just a bit dozy.'

Richards then admitted he was not as diligent with picking up the fines as captain Vincent Kompany.

He continued: 'Kompany, he's busy isn't he? He just looks like that person anyway. He always kept a track of the fines and because I was sort of vice-captain, one of the leaders in the dressing room, he'd ask me to take charge of it.

'But I wasn't going to say to the manager "Oh player was late today, oh player didn't put his bib in the washing machine".

'So it was only if Vincent Kompany caught you. I'm not a snitch.

'You could appeal it as well. You had to go with Vincent Kompany into the manager's office. He had a fine sheet logged of all the fines. He's like a schoolteacher, headmaster. One of those guys that when you see him, you turn the other way.

'I tried to be friends with everyone. I told (Balotelli), "I'm going to let you off today". With him it was every other week so I could only do so much.

'Kompany is looking over my shoulder making sure I was doing my job right. He undermined me a little bit, Kompany did'.

Richards spent 14 years at City between 2001 and 2015, winning the Premier League and FA Cup in that time.