Micah Richards has shared some details regarding former Manchester City teammate, Craig Bellamy, and the bust-ups he used to get into on the training ground.
City signed the Welshman back in the 2009 January transfer window from West Ham United in a deal worth a reported fee of £14m.
During his time at the club, Bellamy, who is now Vincent Kompany’s assistant manager at Burnley, made 51 appearances across all competitions, scoring 15 goals and delivering 15 assists.
Despite only being a permanent City player for two-and-a-half-years, the winger certainly made an impact, seemingly more so on the training ground, but not in a particular positive way, as one former teammate has revealed.
Richards shares Bellamy training ground bust-ups
Speaking on a recent edition of the Match of the Day: Top 10 podcast, Richards said this about Bellamy and his training ground conflicts.
He said: “I was with Bellamy at Man City, he was there for a while. The first training session with Mark Hughes and Richard Dunne was the captain and he’s got the ball and he’s given the ball away like you do in a press.
“Richard Dunne receives the ball and he’s passed it out because we weren’t a passing team back then, and Bellamy turns around to Richard Dunne and says ’no wonder he’s struggling in the league he can’t even pass the ball straight,’ and that’s against the captain and we’re all holding Dunney back from going [at Bellamy].
“He had the same with Gareth Barry as well, he just didn’t care.”
Taking into account what Richards has said about his former teammates training ground behaviour, this may have been why City loaned him out to Cardiff City in the 2010 summer transfer window, before offloading him to Liverpool on a free transfer a year later.
