Sterling was off the boil against Chelsea after his England bust-up with Gomez

We were in added time at the Etihad when Raheem Sterling scored what looked like Manchester City’s third goal, his shot on the turn squirming through the grasp of Chelsea goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga.

But then VAR intervened. It was one of those armpit calls and it went against Sterling. City were moments away from victory but, for once, this wasn’t his day.

The fire that burned so fiercely inside the 24-year-old winger at Anfield a fortnight ago, and reignited so spectacularly in the England players’ canteen at St George’s Park 24 hours later, was curiously absent here.

It isn’t often you can accuse Sterling of being below-par. Not these days anyway. The winger has been so consistently good for his club and country that has been easy to forget the erratic Sterling who left Liverpool for City in a £44million deal in 2015.

His returns to Anfield are never easy affairs for the Londoner but nothing can compare to City’s defeat there on their last Premier League outing as an excellent performance was eclipsed by the fallout with Joe Gomez that erupted again when the two men clashed on international duty.

Sterling was dropped for the Euro 2020 qualifier against Montenegro but was recalled in Kosovo five days later.

Pep Guardiola confirmed in the build-up to this game that he had spoken to Sterling and the player was ‘fine’. But that didn’t seem to be the case.

This was about as flat a performance as you will see from a player who has scored 22 goals for club and country this season.

The game was nearly 14 minutes old when Sterling got his first real meaningful touch of the ball, a lazy cross into the box that was easily clearly by Kurt Zouma.

Indeed, it was the other No.7 on the pitch, Chelsea’s N’Golo Kante, who made a far more telling contribution to proceedings when he got across Benjamin Mendy a short while later to put the visitors in front.

It was no more than Chelsea deserved and they could count themselves rather unfortunate to be behind at the break to Kevin De Bruyne’s deflected shot and an excellent effort from Riyad Mahrez.

Sterling, on the other hand, seemed happy to take the safe option. A five-yard pass, a backwards pass there. There was little of the searing pace and risk-taking that make him such a handful for Premier League defences most weeks of the season.

Not until the end of the first half did we finally see him run into open space down the City left onto David Silva’s pass.

Sterling accelerated away and weighed up his options. He chose Sergio Aguero but a simple square pass was played too far behind his teammate and the moment had gone.

He looked a little livelier in the second half but still lacked his usual spark, briefly switching flanks with Mahrez on two occasions to little effect.

It’s hard to keep a good man like Sterling down though and when opportunity knocked for the first time all night, he tucked it away before VAR intervened.