The Official Raheem Sterling Thread (Part 412)

[Gym Beglin]

What's the latest figure being touted?

 

5% of Greece's debt.

[Jairzinho]

5% of Greece's debt.

 

According to Greece or the IMF?

[Gym Beglin]

According to Greece or the IMF?

According to that funny lad in your avatar.

 

Fair play to him and the government, not accepting cuts to pensions etc. Fuck it.

[magicrat]

I just don't get all the angst about what price we get for him, We WILL spunk the money on a worse replacement. Even now if we can keep him we should.

 

If Sterling was someones else's player that had agitated for move in the way he has and we had the £50 mill or whatever his club would sell him for then would we have any chance of buying him ?  Emphatically no, Chelsea , City , Madrid , Utd would all push us aside if they wanted him, Therefore we are selling a player that we have no chance of replacing like for like

Coutinho will be next and very soon we will have a team where none of the players would be good enough to play for a top side. Its a rapid road to mid table mediocrity 

[Tony Moanero]

magicrat knows. I'm not arsed that he's leaving, and I could give a flying fuck what FSG get for him. Fuck them.

[ZonkoVille77]

Is he gone yet?

[Stickman]

I just don't get all the angst about what price we get for him, We WILL spunk the money on a worse replacement. Even now if we can keep him we should.

 

If Sterling was someones else's player that had agitated for move in the way he has and we had the £50 mill or whatever his club would sell him for then would we have any chance of buying him ?  Emphatically no, Chelsea , City , Madrid , Utd would all push us aside if they wanted him, Therefore we are selling a player that we have no chance of replacing like for like

Coutinho will be next and very soon we will have a team where none of the players would be good enough to play for a top side. Its a rapid road to mid table mediocrity 

 

 

At least we will have a shiny new stand though

[s(k)aturation]

That only people like Donald Trump can afford to sit in?

[Hades]

Decent Guardian article by Barney Ronay sums up why I want to keep Sterling. Surround him with good players and he is incredibly exciting to watch.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/jun/19/raheem-sterling-manchester-city-liverpool

 

Raheem, mate. I’ve been there. I’ve walked that road. I too have stared into the hippy crack abyss. The side-effects, let me tell you, have been pretty severe. Eight years down the line I’m still constantly tired. I no longer socialise normally, instead spending most of my free evenings staring at Foyle’s War with a packet of Doritos Roulette and a bottle of Taste the Difference Riesling. Quite often I hear voices. Annoying, shrill, demanding voices.

Admittedly there is a fair chance the source of these side-effects is having children rather than the dilute nitrous oxide the NHS offers to women having babies – and by extension to any opportunistic co-parent willing to go the extra yard and really share the birth experience while the nurse is out of the room. And, to be fair, Raheem has probably got this one right in the end. Gas and air, as doctors insist on calling this dangerous drug routinely handed out to women in labour and people having fillings, probably is best consumed on a yacht surrounded by laughing beautiful people in designer swimwear.

Manchester City ponder fresh Raheem Sterling bid after Liverpool reject £40m

 

Read more

I guess what I’m trying to say is, let’s all just relax. Deep breaths. Push a little harder. Together we can get past the perineum-shredding idiocy of pretending to be upset about the sight of young men having fun, legally, while on holiday. And focus instead on the far more interesting business of a British record transfer that increasingly looks as though it may actually happen.

From the outside there is an air of final divvyings-up about the current negotiations between Liverpool and Manchester City over Sterling’s future, a sense that what is being ironed out is the manner of his departure not the fact. With this in mind it has probably been a little overlooked in the general noises off but this would be a genuinely fascinating, not to mention good and timely move for both parties.

Most obviously it’s good for City, who need a general flushing out, not only of the team and the project but the air inside the dressing room. Yaya Touré has been the defining player of New City 1.0, with his bolt-on champion’s swagger. In Sterling City will get more of a grower, a star presence and 20-year-old first-team regular (which he will be: Jesús Navas played 47 times last season). More immediately he offers a note of textural variation to that well-seasoned attack, a little speed and raw aggression to complement David Silva’s frictionless craft and Sergio Agüero’s cutting edge.

Even the price tag is probably fair enough if we accept the skewing of the market. Sterling is expensive because he’s English. But he’s also expensive because he’s good. Although, it is here, in the extent of Sterling’s ability, the sense of uncertainty over what he may still become, that the real interest lies.

There has been a sourness to some of the how-good-is-he-really stuff in the past few weeks, driven perhaps by the lurking shadow of what we might call the Sterling Paradox. Here is a player with all the trappings: the style, the outline and the moves of a really high-class footballer. But who is still, in terms of impact, and indeed by any sensible measure, still simply circling around the idea of actually being a high-class footballer. In a sense Sterling’s performance in Manaus forEngland against Italy a year ago was a definitive little sketch of where he is right now. For an hour he was brilliant. And yet somehow he didn’t really do anything. Despite looking the boldest, bravest and most technically refined young footballer on the pitch, Sterling still had less of an effect on the actual result than Mario Balotelli.

Increasingly this sense of almost-but-not-quite has been Sterling’s chief quality, a flickering promise of future excellence, a high-class rustling away at the edge of things.

Sterling has so many attributes, from his control and manipulation of the ball, to his physical robustness (defenders can often be seen bouncing off his prodigious rump), to the mental strength to shine at the sharp end of a title race. Not to mention that beautifully waspish way of moving, neck straight, legs pumping, looking always slightly flustered, like a friendly bath‑time rubber duck that has grown legs, learned to run around and integrated itself successfully into human society but still feels terribly worried its cover may be blown at any moment.

Football transfer rumours: Sergio Agüero leaving for Real Madrid?

 

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It is what Sterling lacks right now that is most interesting, raising as it does the question of exactly what a top-class attacking footballer needs to do these days. For so long English football has obsessed over basic technique and retention of the ball but in more recent times the key quality in elite attacking play seems to be something further, a kind of applied intelligence, the ability to interpret and manage the game around you.

Modern football is essentially a kind of suffocation, a battle for space. What is required is not only precision but an early-warning sense of where the currents will move, where weakness will show itself. It is a quality probably best embodied by someone such as Andrés Iniesta, who simply drifts about in his own portable pocket of space, always two carefully calibrated steps ahead, like a man playing football against a team composed entirely of slow-moving cinematic zombies of the 1970s.

By contrast Sterling often still seems to be all brittle, high-tension endeavour, operating right at the peak of his speed and intensity, never quite ahead of the game. With this in mind a move to City may be just what he needs to open that footballing third eye a little further. Sterling’s best days at Liverpool came alongside Luis Suárez, whose special superpower, it turns out, is to flood the front end of any team with his own relentless creative intelligence. Just as Sterling bloomed next to Suárez, he would surely do so alongside Silva and Agüero, absorbing by osmosis, filling in the gaps in his range, adding the missing gears.

It may be a difficult birth. But what happens next, the reimagining of Raheem, will be fascinating for reasons that have little to do with Uppity Young Men Who Should Know Better, or the perils of medical sedatives, and everything to do with exploring the outer reaches of a very obvious talent.

[Gym Beglin]

 

 

Sterling Liverpool appearances and goals:

 

2011/12 - Age 17 - 3 appearances and 0 goals.

 

2012/13 - Age 18 - 36 appearances and 2 goals

LEAGUE

v Reading (h)

v Sunderland (h)

 

2013/14 - Age 19 - 38 appearances and 10 goals

LEAGUE

v Norwich (h)

v Spurs (a)

v Cardiff (h)

v Arsenal (2) (h)

v Southampton (a)

v Man City (h)

v Norwich (2) (a)

 

CUPS

v Notts County (h))

 

2014/15 - Age 20 - 50 appearances and 11 goals

LEAGUE

v Southampton (h)

v Spurs (a)

v West Ham (h)

v Burnley (a)

v West Ham (h)

v Southampton (a)

v Newcastle (h)

 

CUPS

v Bolton (a)

v Bournemouth (a) (2)

v Chelsea (h)

 

 

 

Yes you can see the outline of a very good young player, but by Christ he's not a £50m player.

[Babb'sBurstNad]

Depends who's paying, what cash they've got and how much they need an English player.

 

City tick all the boxes for a side to stump up that kind of cash, particularly if we're going to see another inflation of wages and prices due to the new TV deal. £100k per week is the new £70k, and it sounds like £50m is the new £30m.

[magicrat]

 

Yes you can see the outline of a very good young player, but by Christ he's not a £50m player.

 

He will be 

[billypilgrimnz]

He will be

He will not.

[JermainePennant]

Depends who's paying, what cash they've got and how much they need an English player.

 

City tick all the boxes for a side to stump up that kind of cash, particularly if we're going to see another inflation of wages and prices due to the new TV deal. £100k per week is the new £70k, and it sounds like £50m is the new £30m.

City need five homegrown players added to their squad after Milner, Richards, Sinclair and Lampard left.They will pay up sooner or later.

[Dave D]

City need five homegrown players added to their squad after Milner, Richards, Sinclair and Lampard left.They will pay up sooner or later.

 

 

 

 

Dont let it be later for goodness sake. We'll end up paying 30m on Kevin Phillips due to having to rush the deal through

[dennis tooth]

Sterling Liverpool appearances and goals:

2011/12 - Age 17 - 3 appearances and 0 goals.

2012/13 - Age 18 - 36 appearances and 2 goals

LEAGUE

v Reading (h)

v Sunderland (h)

2013/14 - Age 19 - 38 appearances and 10 goals

LEAGUE

v Norwich (h)

v Spurs (a)

v Cardiff (h)

v Arsenal (2) (h)

v Southampton (a)

v Man City (h)

v Norwich (2) (a)

CUPS

v Notts County (h))

2014/15 - Age 20 - 50 appearances and 11 goals

LEAGUE

v Southampton (h)

v Spurs (a)

v West Ham (h)

v Burnley (a)

v West Ham (h)

v Southampton (a)

v Newcastle (h)

CUPS

v Bolton (a)

v Bournemouth (a) (2)

v Chelsea (h)

Yes you can see the outline of a very good young player, but by Christ he's not a £50m player.

You counting assists as contributions too?

Christ navas played 40 times for city last year, sterling at £50m is a snip especially as its another english club, Id say rival but swansea cant afford raheem and southampton cant either.

[moof]

I'm gutted to be losing him tbh, don't know why people are downplaying his ability. He's already proven how good he can be in a good team, with players like Silva and Aguero holding his hand he's going to be devastating.

[El Dangerous]

Ian Ayre is a cult.

Too much negativity here, I'm heading over to RAWK to drink the cool aids.

[Denny Crane]

I'm gutted to be losing him tbh, don't know why people are downplaying his ability. He's already proven how good he can be in a good team, with players like Silva and Aguero holding his hand he's going to be devastating.

 

Some of our fans were happy to convince themselves we would be better off without Suarez so this is probably not that bad by those standards.

 

It is more significant that a 20 yr old does not believe he can fulfill his ambitions. Trophy wise, financially and become a better quality footballer at Liverpool under Rodgers and FSG that is the real killer blow.

[smilezzz]

I'm sad the little fairy is leaving too, but it's pointless wallowing in despair and over playing his abilities.

 

let's not ignore his stats, which show that he's a good player right now, but the stats don't tell everything. the previous season all but two of his goals were put on a plate for him by Suarez. Last season he played as the focal point of our attack, and whilst the numbers are decent, theyre not excellent, and they don't show how many opportunities were fluffed or wasted.

Anything over 40m for the brat is a very good return. Use it to get Iturbe or Firminho, and that shit hot Brazilian striker from Shaktar and we've improved threefold.

[J-V]

Over the last two summers we've lost Suarez and Gerrard.  I just can't get that worked up by losing Sterling if/when it comes to that.

[TheHowieLama]

It is not an exodus.

[Red Phoenix]

Would prefer it if we can just settle for 45+5mil add-ons or something, and that this can be done with asap. It's really boring now. I won't miss him diving around so often either. It really does my head in how often he dives, even if he can be a top player at times. I'm also not sure if he'll be that consistent, even at a club like City with Aguero, etc, around him. More interested in who we're going to be buying once he's gone now.

[El Dangerous]

It is not an exodus.

Well Moses left as well.

[ben48]

Some of our fans were happy to convince themselves we would be better off without Suarez so this is probably not that bad by those standards.

 

It is more significant that a 20 yr old does not believe he can fulfill his ambitions. Trophy wise, financially and become a better quality footballer at Liverpool under Rodgers and FSG that is the real killer blow.

Denny lad you've hit the nail on the head,when it comes down to it, why does the lad want to leave?.Probably the same reasons that Torres,Masch,and dare I say Mr Gerrard wanted out.