Micah Richards has revealed how he helped set up Joleon Lescott’s controversial Everton exit to Manchester City only for his club to try and send him in the opposite direction to Goodison Park as part of the deal.

Following his £5million switch from Wolverhampton Wanderers in 2006, Lescott arguably enjoyed the best three years of his career from an individual standpoint with Everton, establishing himself as an England international and scoring 17 goals – including 10 in the 2007/08 season – in 143 appearances for the Blues.

Despite helping David Moyes’ side to a fifth-place finish in the Premier League in 2009 as well as reaching the FA Cup final, the Birmingham-born defender forced through an acrimonious exit to the Etihad Stadium early the following season when he joined nouveau riche City, who had finished 10th the previous campaign but were now petrodollar-fuelled following their takeover by the Abu Dhabi United Group the year before.

With City, Lescott went on to win a brace of Premier League titles under Roberto Mancini and Manuel Pellegrini plus the FA Cup in 2011, also being named as an unused substitute for the 2014 League Cup final, but Richards, who admitted to ‘tapping up’ his fellow Brummie while on international duty with England, has lifted the lid on how he was almost hoisted with his own petard.

EXCLUSIVE:Inside Sean Dyche's Everton team as 'harsh and truthful' debates revealed

READ NEXT: Everton brace for new dilemma after Demarai Gray exit as worrying transfer trend must end

Speaking on The Rest Is Football podcast with Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer, Richards was asked about whether he got to choose his room-mate while away with The Three Lions and said: “You know we always talk about that golden generation where you had Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea.

“People say there were cliques. There wasn’t really cliques, you go with who you are familiar with.

“Of course you’re going to go with your mates. Then there was the ‘misfits’ like (players from) Manchester City back then, Aston Villa with Ashley Young and Joleon Lescott at Everton.

“So that’s when I became really close to Joleon. We used to room all the time and we used to talk about absolutely everything.

“Then we were talking about football and whether he was happy at Everton, all these sort of things, and he said, ‘I’d love to come to Man City’. So I’m thinking, ‘buzzing’, we could get to have Joleon, how much would he cost? All this sort of thing.

“After the international break we went back to our clubs. I pulled Mark Hughes (City’s manager) and it was Eddie Niedzwiecki who was a coach and his right-hand man.

“I said to him, ‘Joleon wants to come, if you’re interested’. He sorted of just nodded and was like, ‘yeah, we’re looking at that one’.

“A week later, I got a call from Joleon who said to me it looked like it (the transfer) was going to happen. I don’t know how long it was from when the deal materialised until he actually came but Joleon is coming to Man City now and Mark Hughes is only trying to get rid of me in the deal to go to Everton!

“I’m thinking: ‘Hold on, I’ve done all the dirty work getting Joleon to come to Man City and Mark Hughes has not even told me anything, he’s trying to get me to go the other way in a swap deal’. That was then, not my respect for Mark Hughes was gone, but I thought: ‘I don’t trust you anymore’.”

Lescott would end up leaving Everton for £22million and was a club colleague of Richards for the next five years at Manchester City before the centre-back departed for West Bromwich Albion and the right-back went on loan to Fiorentina. The pair were reunited just 12 months later though when they both returned home to join Aston Villa.