Once again there has been lots of media focus on Raheem Sterling this week, though after scoring a hat-trick against the Czech Republic and another goal in Montenegro, assisting two others and standing up once again to racist abuse, the most recent articles have been entirely positive. I think this is brilliant and totally deserved but while the media are busy praising his skills it is the journalists who have performed a 180-degree turn.

Everybody is taking this opportunity to praise Sterling but I think it’s an opportunity to learn from the way he has been spoken and written about in the past, and to say we need to be less quick to judge people in football, particularly black players. Paul Pogba is another good example. People have been very quick to judge young black players on their lifestyles and then when they go on to win the World Cup, to take league titles or score goals they’re all of a sudden changed men. They haven’t changed, people are just choosing to see them in a different way. Perception is a big thing in football and people need to be more careful about how they choose to perceive young players in the first instance.

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Before Sterling left Liverpool, he gave an interview to the BBC in which he said he was not motivated by money but by a desire to win trophies and improve as a player. Everyone ridiculed him and insisted he just wanted some of City’s cash but four years on he was won the league and a couple of cups, significantly improved under Pep Guardiola and Liverpool have won nothing since that time. Sterling took the best decision for his career, which has paid off brilliantly, and he did not deserve any of the criticism that followed.

It irritates me when I see people who criticised him before for speaking his mind now saying he’s so brave for doing the same thing. Everyone’s suddenly saying that Sterling has grown into a man; for me, he’s always been the same person, but now he is choosing the right opportunities to speak up.

He has certainly improved as a player, though. He definitely offers more cutting edge in front of goal. Comparing his performances for his country now with those at the World Cup, it’s incredible how his confidence has grown. I watched his games in Russia and sometimes it seemed he didn’t want to attack the penalty area, didn’t want to fight for chances. Now when he gets a chance it goes in, nine times out of 10. As a striker I know how important that confidence is, that total belief when you run into the penalty area that you’re going to score or assist. He isn’t burdened by worry about making mistakes on the pitch and he doesn’t seem to care what anyone thinks about what he does off it.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pep Guardiola’s influence has been important for Sterling. Photograph: Simon Stacpoole/Offside/Getty Images

Whatever it is that’s made him so carefree and has allowed him to relax and enjoy his football, he’s got to continue with that. It’s so important to have that mentality, that absolute belief in yourself. His performances are improving his self-belief and his self-belief is improving his performances, and he’s in this purple patch right now when he isn’t just scoring for his club and for his country, he’s scoring hat-tricks.

Pep Guardiola’s influence has been important. He stuck with Sterling when he was going through less productive phases, when other managers might have been influenced by what the press were saying. If you drop a player when his form dips, sometimes it never quite comes back. For all his tactical genius Guardiola is also a manager who can be patient and loyal, who backs players to come out of bad patches and hit golden patches.

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Suddenly Sterling is a candidate for the player of the season awards. He deserves to be part of that conversation but the criticism of his poor performances wasn’t fair in the first place. He has been scoring consistently for two seasons and he’s shutting people up with his displays on the pitch, with his interviews and his posts on social media. The people who were critical of him a couple of years ago have suddenly got a different bandwagon to jump on. The kind of criticism he has had to endure in his career is not easy to deal with: it can have a very negative effect, to the extent you stop enjoying what you do, you stop enjoying football. I think it’s really important to applaud Sterling, because in sport the best way – the only way, and the hardest – to shut people up is to win.

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What is pleasing about the coverage of Sterling and of the game in Montenegro is that the papers are no longer afraid of addressing the issue of racism head-on. They’re not beating around the bush, referring obliquely to “controversial” or “unsavoury” incidents, they’re saying it how it is. I commend Gareth Southgate as well for being very up-front about it, because I think that’s what it takes. There has been a change in the way the media approach racism, a readiness to confront it and deal with it, which I hope will soon be reflected by Uefa and Fifa. The governing bodies have been left behind, seemingly keener to impose bigger fines for players who wear the wrong socks or clubs who fail to prevent a cat from running on to the pitch than they are for racist abuse and that has to change. Fast.

Southgate deserves praise for a variety of reasons. His young, attacking England team is entertaining and getting results. He is giving young players an opportunity and he is not putting too much pressure on them. Now is the time to do it, when the qualifying process is just beginning, so when the big tournament comes they have had enough exposure and experience to take it in their strides. It has taken a long time for England to find a manager who has the right experience, the right authority and a commitment to youth and progressive football. I really think we’ve found a gem of a manager and if anyone is going to take the team forward, to enable them to reach the latter stages of more big competitions in the future and to allow Sterling and his ilk to continue to shine, it is him.