Micah Richards says Mario Balotelli got into trouble so often at Manchester City that that the club would have fined him over £100,000 by Christmas.
Balotelli might well have asked “Why always me?” after looking at his payslip at the end of the month, but former team-mate Richards says the Italian striker paid the price for being “dozy”.
Richards gave an insight into Balotelli’s tardiness when asked by BBC Radio 5 Live about a list of fines which recently leaked out of the Chelsea camp.
“£20,000 late for the starting of training – that is a lot. But everything else seems to be in sync,” said the former City and Aston Villa defender.
“But Balotelli was always late.
“We used to give all of our money to charities so by Christmas time we’d have £100,000 or £150,000 in there just from Balotelli.
“He would be in the building. Say we had a meeting upstairs – he’d just be downstairs relaxing. He’d come to the meeting but he was just a bit dozy.”
Richards also revealed that in his role as City vice-captain, he was also made to awkwardly collect the fines from the other players by club captain Vincent Kompany.
“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 tell me to take charge of it.
“But I’m not going to say to the manager ‘Oh player was late today, oh player didn’t put his bib in the washing machine’. I’m not going to do that.
“So it was only if Vincent Kompany caught you, so the lads were avoiding him. I’m not a snitch!”
“You could appeal it as well. You had to go with Kompany into the manager’s office.
“He had a fine sheet logged of all the fines. He was like a schoolteacher, a headmaster. One of those guys that when you see him, you just turn the other way.”