Sterling’s Development At City Proves He Was Right To Ditch Liverpool

When Manchester City host Liverpool at the Etihad Stadium on Saturday, the cameras will be trained on one man – Raheem Sterling. The 20-year-old left Liverpool for Manchester in acrimonious circumstances in the summer for a fee of £44m, though that could rise to £49m depending on certain clauses being triggered.

The fee was seen as astronomical for a young man who had few tangible achievements to his name. When it became clear that Sterling, along with his agent Aidy Ward, was pushing for the move, the Liverpool old boys club rallied round the Anfield outfit. Comments in the press from the likes of Graeme Souness, Jamie Carragher and even John Aldridge told us how Sterling should stay on Merseyside to earn a move away. Apparently, Liverpool are a club so special you can’t leave them until you’ve proven you can win trophies in their colours. The catch 22 is obvious; to win trophies, you really need to leave them.

The behaviour of those in the media connected to Liverpool was alarming and showed that, even for those in jobs where professionalism should be a pre-requisite of the job, club bias can easily cloud one’s clarity of thought. There was a collective will to tarnish the reputation of a boy barely out of his teens who was being offered an opportunity most people can only ever dream of.

Sterling had the chance to move to a club with better short-term prospects of winning major titles and that would allow him to work with vastly superior players on a daily basis, thus giving him the opportunity to develop his game alongside them. That he also had the chance to boost his pay packet to a level that would set his family up for life cannot have been insignificant in his thoughts, but the biggest wages tend to be a by-product of being one of the best performers.

He helped carry Liverpool close to the league title in 2014, only for the team to regress around him the following season. His loss of form in the second half of the 2014/15 season can only have been exacerbated by the phenomenal level of expectation placed on his shoulders; once Luis Suarez had been sold and Daniel Sturridge became a regular occupant of the treatment room, young Sterling was expected to be the driving force for his club. That meant propping up a team that had been severely weakened, yet still had title ambitions added to a Champions League campaign.

Throw in the additional weight of an expectant England fanbase looking forward to their young Lion making an impression on the international scene and you had a heady mix of hype, expectation and pressure. Should it really have come as a surprise when a still-inexperienced footballer failed to keep a consistently high performance level? Where most players his age would be competing at a lower level or being blooded into a big team, he was front-and-centre at Anfield; the new poster boy for youth prospects in England.

Now seems to be a good arbitrary point to look at how the player has been doing since he made the short move to Manchester. At the price City paid for him, a record fee for an English player, the expectation on him is extreme. Many demand the finished article. That new-signing shine appears to have worn off and the Etihad crowd are more openly critical of his faults than they were back in August. New players always get a grace period where supporters will allow mistakes, but that is over for City’s number 7. It’s not that the fans have turned on him, far from it; it’s more the case that unrealistic expectations have now replaced the summer goodwill that greets any pre-season purchase.

The undeniable fact is that Sterling has improved City immensely. We knew about his eye-catching strengths before he signed; he’s fast, good with the ball at his feet and capable of being extremely direct. These were all things City missed for most of the last campaign. What was less obvious to a more casual observer of Liverpool was just how intelligent the player is off the ball. He has what a more clichéd hack might call a ‘footballer’s brain’ – his tactical awareness is extremely impressive. It shows in his movement; he knows exactly where he needs to be to aid the transition of play and to open space for his teammates; with a raft of players adept at exploiting the gaps he creates, this aspect of Sterling’s game is invaluable to Manuel Pellegrini’s side.

It always seems odd to praise a player’s work rate – hard work is really the least that one should expect from a person paid so handsomely for their services. However, the desire to win allied with the natural industry of Sterling hints at a young man with no ego. Liverpool supporters will know all about his willingness to put in the hard yards, having profited from it for a long time themselves.

There are many positives to his game. That said, even the staunchest Sterling fan would have to be wearing spectacles with the rosiest of tints to fail to see his faults. His decision making lets him down a little too often in the last third of the pitch, a fault that results in good chances going begging because he is often indecisive in his finishing. That said, he netted a hat trick against Bournemouth and, in a team that creates as many chances as the Blues do, he will continue to get plenty of shooting practice. A 20-year-old player can never be the finished article; the knowledge that he has room for improvement is what makes him so tantalising.

He will face a hostile reception from Liverpool supporters on Saturday. They would do well to remember that the sale of Raheem Sterling earned them a significant profit on the small investment made when they took him from QPR in much the same way as City took him from them.

The Merseyside club owe the player nothing and, having given his all whilst under their employment, the player owes nothing back. He is in the next stage of his development and Manchester City will benefit greatly for years to come. Everything is in place for him to make good on his enormous potential.