Sterling took a penalty off Cole Palmer and then missed, but he was defended by his younger teammate Noni Madueke since then.
On Madueke's comments, Pochettino stated: It's about to be calm now and accept the situation. The most important thing with our experience is to manage and deal with these types of things. We are talking about a very experienced player.
"What we cannot do is to create more bigger things that were emotional at some point. I really believe the fans love our player, and love and support our player, and for sure they are going to support him and the rest of the team.
"I know that the teammates need to be a good teammate and players can talk, express their emotion also, and their opinion. But I think we need to be careful in the way that we are going to talk, and to give our opinion. We need to build a strong relationship between everyone and things like this, we need to, of course, understand but not to agree.
"Like I said in my press conference after the game, not agree because always the players want to perform well, to play well, and to score goals. The 'keeper save goals, the defensive player need to tackle and perform really well. This type of situation is bigger maybe to only pay attention to what happens.
"I was also suffering the anger of the fans because of disappointment of the fans. Some players, also. I think the whole team was suffering this situation.
"The most important thing is Raheem is an experienced player. For sure, he understands. After the game, we explained the situation. Now we need to move on, to try, for us to help and protect the players that is our responsibility.
"The players need to understand to make the effort to convince our fans that we are in a very good way. But we all love our players, the teammates love their teammates and the teammates need to love the fans and the fans need to love the players and the club. It is a connection we need to create because if not, we are going to lose.
"Not just us, but the fans and everyone is going to lose. That is why we need to be careful when we go to talk, to translate our opinion, our emotion. We understand completely, it's about emotion on the pitch. We pay attention on the street because people, it's a little bit different.
"When you want to win and see your club doing well, it's normal it's going to happen. It's about expectation. The expectation is so big. I think we are calm, always, feeling the responsibility."