Raheem Sterling

[DannyMan2006]

Oh, and id be more inclined to say he would be ready to leave if he had produced on the big stage for us on a regular basis. As it stands, big games tend to pass him by or he bottles it when he gets a chance.

[Alex]

I do enjoy this rewriting of history in regards to Sterling. The guy was our best player until December time. Carried the team basically.

He has done well, but as it turns out a 20 year old cant carry a side consistently all season. Who knew?

[Maxiedge]

Eden Hazard is a top level player. Luis Suarez is a top level player. Diego Costa for all his unpleasant qualities is a top level player.

Sanchez, Robben, Vidal, Kroos, Aguero, and Reus. All top level players.


I can see no valid arguement as to how Raheem Sterling could currently be regarded as being seen as being on that level. He is in the early stages of a career that may see him become a top level player or that might see him become nothing of the sort.


For me he is a young player who looks to have the potential to have a very high ceiling. He is also a young player who has had as many poor games as he has had good ones to date and at this stage of his career tends to flit between being excellent or poor with no great amount of middle ground.


He needs time to develop. He needs to quality around him because he is not yet good enough to be the top quality on a regular basis for others and he needs to be the one to want to give himself time to develop into a proper top player.

If he thinks he is already a top player and one of the best players in the league and that he deserves the wage of one of the very best, then good luck to him if he can find a club that will buy into that and spend what it takes to get him. But I think that route may see him getting more bench time than he would like. Better players than what he currently is have made mega money moves and seen it end in tears.

But if he wants to stay at Liverpool, accept the reported offer of £100k a week (which would make him the highest paid 20 year old footballer in the world if I am not mistaken) and look to use the game time he is certain to get in order to grow as a player, then I think he has a chance of actually becoming the player that he seems to think he already is.

Ok, my definition of top player is different to yours. The ones you mentioned I would class as world class or very close. I thought we were talking in the bracket below that.

I completely accept your point that he is being greedy and badly advised but I think the club need to take a portion of the blame for this too. He's become a product of his environment and asking a 21 year old to shoulder so much responsibility will give him a big head. Probably the only 21 year old allowed to take a mid-season break to Jamaica too.

My point is? The club's lack of ambition last summer and transfer policy has put them in this position and they need to rectify it by putting their hands in their pockets.

[Maxiedge]

Ridiculous to suggest he is a top level player. He is a good premiership player and that is all. He would not get in the first XI at any of Chelsea, Arsenal or City. I saw Arsenal lose to Swansea on the box the other day, their first team was top quality and they had players like Walcott & Wilshere on the bench.

And if anyone can tell me a game where Raheem was top quality other than playing in a diamond at the tip, I'd be interested to hear. And i can't think of a better team in world football than ourselves where he'd get a game in that role.

He can't even make a claim to better than one of his team mates in that role this season, Couts is a level above him this season.

Sterling would be an upgrade on Navas for City on the right. In fact, wouldn't surprise me if the bid was being prepared

[Vermilion]

I do enjoy this rewriting of history in regards to Sterling. The guy was our best player until December time. Carried the team basically.

He has done well, but as it turns out a 20 year old cant carry a side consistently all season. Who knew?

[Maxiedge]

We have a manager and a view point from the top that places value in playing youngsters. He can have ups and downs here and he would have little pressure. This club will still challenge for trophies and will likely be in Europe every season.

He will start every week and in Anfield he plays on a great stage to a great crowd. He would be a fool to leave here and gamble with his future. He should look long term as opposed to short term.

this is true and it's great but he obviously wants more...

[baitman]

he wants to go to that london and chill wiv his lil bro's back in the hood.
ideas above his station, wants it all right now, wont put the graft in. we need to get some anti-aircraft guns and then BOOM.

[Doc_Piptorious]

I do enjoy this rewriting of history in regards to Sterling. The guy was our best player until December time. Carried the team basically.

He has done well, but as it turns out a 20 year old cant carry a side consistently all season. Who knew?

As I said in my earlier post. For the first half of the season he was performing to a level that suggests he is a potential top player, but the flip side is that his on pitch performances in the second half of the season make a good potential argument for him to be horribly overrated.

Personally I think he falls under having the potential to become a top player, but that he is suffering from being badly advised or from letting great reviews at the start of the season go to his head leading to him thinking he is the real deal already.


He is young though, and it would be unrealistic to expect a player who is clearly not fully developed, or even close to being so, to be the main man for the team, but just as that is unrealistic I think it is also unrealistic for such a player to think that he is suddenly deserving of the sort of wage that fully developed team carrying players can demand.


My own feeling is that his head has already been turned, and that he already has a preference as to where he wants to go this summer.


Would prefer to see him turn into a top player with us, but if it is a thing that he wants to leave and that we can get a transfer fee that far outstrips his current level as a player, then it needs to be done early in the summer and the money for him be invested in one to two players who look to have the quality to go straight into the first team.

[Cormack74]

Bloody hell, you make it sound like he's been playing for nothing other than his own goodwill. He's been handsomely rewarded for it and he's been offered £100k a week to keep "carrying" us.

I don't think anyone's said he's ****, I think most see the potential but also accept that there's still a lot to do. The problem is that he wants the money paid to the finished article. More significantly is the way he's gone about his contract negotiations of late, particularly the interview he gave behind everyone's back. He started burning bridges with that so its only natural fans will defend him a lot less now and dig the knife in occasionally.

[Vermilion]

Blokes just a kid tbh, starting out, showing great potential and more.

Then his agent got involved big time imo, nothing to do with Sterling being the big man, far from it, more like a very young man taking bad advice.

[McDermotX]

Speaking in his final press conference as a Liverpool player ahead of his last competitive game at Anfield, Gerrard says Sterling will not get a better manager to develop him than Brendan Rodgers.

The 34-year-old said: "In my opinion he should sign a new deal, but that's something I can't control.

"My advice to Raheem is he needs a manager who believes in him and will help coach him - and there's no one better than Brendan Rodgers for that.

"Brendan is a fantastic man-manager. The danger is these younger players want it all too soon but they go to another club and become just another number."

Midfielder Gerrard, who will move to LA Galaxy this summer, is set for an emotional goodbye at the club at which he has spent 17 years and supported since he was a boy.

The former England skipper thanked all the managers he has played under over the years, from Gerard Houllier to Rafa Benitez, but reserved special praise for current boss Rodgers.

"I wish I'd met Brendan in the peak of my playing days because I think we could have won lots of trophies together," he said.

"He's been great with me, great for the team and great with the young players. If they're good enough, Brendan has shown he will give them the chance, but first and foremost, they have to be good enough."

[gratziani]

So he has outgrown the club already.

If he had scored in the big games Versus United , Chelsea etc then he would be playing in the champions league next year and have a day out at Wembley.

I think people are forgetting under our present manager he has got loads of game time and been propelled into this STAR player when at most other clubs he would have been loaned out.

Modern players thinking they are better than their club and peers before they have earned it , what a shocker !

[rodo]

Raheem meet Shaun Wright Philips and Francis Jeffers

[Alex]

Raheem meet Shaun Wright Philips and Francis Jeffers

Two things here:

1. No, he is nothing like them. One was a head down speed merchant with nothing else. The other was Francis Jeffers.

2. He still plays for us. You know that right? He, alongside Coutinho have been 2 of the bright spots this season.

[Alex]

Blokes just a kid tbh, starting out, showing great potential and more.

Then his agent got involved big time imo, nothing to do with Sterling being the big man, far from it, more like a very young man taking bad advice.

He has been advised horrifically. Do you think he picked the phone up to the BBC and asked to tell his side of it? Nope, he had some parasite sitting making those calls.

A lot of agents are leeches. Unfortunately his seems like one of them. Its a shame though, because the few bad ones make the rest look like arseholes too.