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		</div><p>Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola has defended his decision to rest in-form Raheem Sterling after his side were held to a 0-0 draw by Stoke last night.</p>
<p>Thinking ahead to Saturday&#8217;s FA Cup quarter-final at Middlesbrough and next week&#8217;s Champions League trip to Monaco, Guardiola rotated his squad for the game.</p>
<p>Sterling was left out completely while David Silva was only introduced as a second-half substitute.</p>
<p>Guardiola did not agree the tactic had backfired and insisted he had little choice.</p>
<p>He said: <i>&#8220;The rotations are good when you are successful in the results, but when you&#8217;re not always we miss the other people.</p>
<p>&#8220;But the competition is a lot of games. When you have one game a week, you can play 11 players no problem but when you have a lot of games you have to make a rotation.&#8221;</i></p>
<p>Last night&#8217;s stalemate was City&#8217;s fifth at the Etihad Stadium in the Premier League this season and left them 10 points behind leaders Chelsea.</p>
<p>Guardiola said: <i>&#8220;Our results away are much better than at home. Maybe next season will be the opposite. We dropped points. We have to analyze.</p>
<p>&#8220;In the first half we had problems. They defended aggressively, deep, and our strikers stayed there, didn&#8217;t move.</p>
<p>&#8220;The second half was much better and we created chances to score. The goalkeeper from Stoke did not save too much because we didn&#8217;t really shoot at the net but we were there (attacking) in the last minutes.</p>
<p>&#8220;It is football, it happens sometimes in the season, but I don&#8217;t have regrets about how they fought.&#8221;</i></p>
<p>City came to life after a drab first half but could not find a way through Stoke&#8217;s stubborn rearguard with Sergio Aguero, Leroy Sane, Silva and Kelechi Iheanacho all having good chances.</p>
<p>Stoke boss Mark Hughes was particularly pleased to see his team show such strength against one of the league&#8217;s top teams after their capitulation against Tottenham 10 days ago.</p>
<p>The Potters conceded four goals in the first half against Spurs but were resolute throughout at the Etihad Stadium.</p>
<p>Hughes said: <i>&#8220;You have to have an attitude to the game in terms of making sure you are not going to get beat; you have to drive yourself and you have to drive your team-mates alongside you and everyone was doing that.</p>
<p>&#8220;We had too many questions asked of our performance at Spurs. We held our hands up, we weren&#8217;t good enough on the day and were well beaten. Because that was fresh in our minds, you saw a response.</p>
<p>&#8220;We had a good response at the weekend in a different type of game (a 2-0 win over Middlesbrough). Tonight we needed to answer a few questions that people had posed of us and hopefully we have done.&#8221;</i></p>
<p>Hughes handed a first start in a Stoke shirt to striker Saido Berahino and praised the performance of the former West Brom man.</p>
<p>Berahino showed some neat touches and held the ball up well before being replaced late on by Glenn Whelan.</p>
<p>Hughes said: <i>&#8220;He showed good levels today. We made a change, we just needed an extra body in midfield. He still had good energy, he could have finished the game, so it wasn&#8217;t as though he was tiring markedly.</p>
<p>&#8220;That showed he&#8217;s fit and up to speed now so he&#8217;s going to get lots of games from now until the end of the season.&#8221;</i></p>
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