Season 2014/15

[Martinmarx]

He signed a contract before the start of last season, and is talking about if he were offered a new contract last Summer. Nobody gets a new contract every Summer.

Harry Kane has just signed a new contract for £45K a week. Spurs needed a goalscorer. He's stepped up and made a massive impact. We needed Sterling to step up and provide the same sort of impact, if not quite the same amount of goals, in the wake of Suarez's departure and Sturridge's injuries. Has he? No.
He ought to think himself lucky we're offering him a new deal at all. After getting one at the start of last season, he's not taken it up another stage this season. How does he deserve an improved deal? Extend his deal, but not increase his pay.

Which is exactly why I persist in saying - sell him. Off he goes. The club moves on. He hasn't stepped up his game. He didn't play as a 100 K/week player at OT, he hasn't won us progression in any of the cups. He's overrated and that's all there's to it really. He'll never be that big star.

Nothing frustrates me so much as being held hostages by average players who doesn't want to be hear anyway.

[Edward224]

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/raheem-sterling-liverpool-contract-2015-premier-league/

We can all scoff at Arsenal but whilst we have spent 15 years talking about a new stadium they went ahead and built theirs. They are now showing a bit more ambition in the transfer market too. Top players want champions league football EVERY season, something else Arsenal can offer that we can't. We made lots of excuses but the fact is Sanchez chose them clearly ahead of us. Looking from the outside we're just not seen as a big player right now. We qualified for the CL, sold our one world class player who had only recently signed a huge deal, then armed with the best part of £100m went shopping at Southampton!!! Last season he was team mates with Luis Suarez and Steven Gerrard, who will it be next season? James Milner? Danny Ings? Fabian Delph? The mind boggles.

The timing of this interview is appalling and it leaves a bad taste in the mouth but it's hard to argue with some of the things he's saying. And why wasn't he offered a better contract in the summer? Probably because we're trying to do this thing on the cheap aren't we? If he leaves it will be terrible. Far more damning and damaging than when Torres or Suarez left. This is a kid and he's already sussed us out. If we can't even tie a 20 year old to the club then what does that say about us? It's easy to paint him as the villain in all of this but we haven't managed to sign Henderson up yet either have we? So I don't necessarily buy this line that it's just the club trying to drive a hard bargain. We're shelling out £450k a week on Johnson, Sturridge and Gerrard for God's sake. Lambert has been earning almost twice as much as Sterling all season long, think about that for a second. No wonder Henderson and Sterling might be feeling sold short a little bit. But this is clearly not just about money because putting these talks off has cost him a fortune, it's also about ambition and it should really wake one or two people up that a young boy seems to be more ambitious than one of the world's biggest clubs. The truth hurts sometimes though and nobody wants to accept it so they blame the player and his agent for being greedy or start comparing him to Scott Sinclair. Dear oh dear.

[the dude abides]

To me - looking from outside - Sterling was always a kid that seemed to have ideas above his station. There was always an ego there.

He has not done much of note this season.  He has not kicked on.  But the experience of playing in other roles this season, will be excellent for his development.   He is still young, and there is tremendous potential there.   

But potential is the correct word to use.

I think that he was always going to leave us - be it sooner, or later.  He just always reminded me of that type of human being.   He may label it as being ambitious.  Others will label it as greed.

And - if we are honest - which one of us would not move to a much better paying job.

Football though is not your average job.  Players get exceptionally well paid....even the crappiest ones.

I think he has made a bad mistake, in giving an interview that was not sanctioned by Liverpool FC.

There is still two years left on his contract.  I expect Liverpool to sell him, either this summer or next.  I can see him at somewhere like Bayern Munich.  But I cannot see him at Barca or Real Madrid (he is nowhere near good enough to get into their starting eleven).  But he may have a bit-part role at Bayern. 

And when he leaves us, I would - as manager -  shake his hand and wish him the best.

It's business.  We move on.  Far better players than Sterling have left us. 

And if someone were to offer us big money for him - anywhere between say 50 and 75 million - I would rip their hand off, to get the deal done ASAP.

Let someone else play Russian Roulette - and pay over the odds on mere *potential*

[the dude abides]

He'd do well to listen to Scholes.

He signed a contract before the start of last season, and is talking about if he were offered a new contract last Summer. Nobody gets a new contract every Summer.

Harry Kane has just signed a new contract for £45K a week. Spurs needed a goalscorer. He's stepped up and made a massive impact. We needed Sterling to step up and provide the same sort of impact, if not quite the same amount of goals, in the wake of Suarez's departure and Sturridge's injuries. Has he? No.
He ought to think himself lucky we're offering him a new deal at all. After getting one at the start of last season, he's not taken it up another stage this season. How does he deserve an improved deal? Extend his deal, but not increase his pay.

yes, Paul Scholes is spot on.

Good comparison with Kane's new contract......*only* 45,000 per week. 

And our kid, who has done feck all this season, won't take 100,000.

As you say, he should count himself very fortunate to get the offer of such a great new contract.

If his pay was based on performance, he would be on lower wages this year.

[Tes]

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/raheem-sterling-liverpool-contract-2015-premier-league/

We can all scoff at Arsenal but whilst we have spent 15 years talking about a new stadium they went ahead and built theirs. They are now showing a bit more ambition in the transfer market too. Top players want champions league football EVERY season, something else Arsenal can offer that we can't. We made lots of excuses but the fact is Sanchez chose them clearly ahead of us. Looking from the outside we're just not seen as a big player right now. We qualified for the CL, sold our one world class player who had only recently signed a huge deal, then armed with the best part of £100m went shopping at Southampton!!! Last season he was team mates with Luis Suarez and Steven Gerrard, who will it be next season? James Milner? Danny Ings? Fabian Delph? The mind boggles.

The timing of this interview is appalling and it leaves a bad taste in the mouth but it's hard to argue with some of the things he's saying. And why wasn't he offered a better contract in the summer? Probably because we're trying to do this thing on the cheap aren't we? If he leaves it will be terrible. Far more damning and damaging than when Torres or Suarez left. This is a kid and he's already sussed us out. If we can't even tie a 20 year old to the club then what does that say about us? It's easy to paint him as the villain in all of this but we haven't managed to sign Henderson up yet either have we? So I don't necessarily buy this line that it's just the club trying to drive a hard bargain. We're shelling out £450k a week on Johnson, Sturridge and Gerrard for God's sake. Lambert has been earning almost twice as much as Sterling all season long, think about that for a second. No wonder Henderson and Sterling might be feeling sold short a little bit. But this is clearly not just about money because putting these talks off has cost him a fortune, it's also about ambition and it should really wake one or two people up that a young boy seems to be more ambitious than one of the world's biggest clubs. The truth hurts sometimes though and nobody wants to accept it so they blame the player and his agent for being greedy or start comparing him to Scott Sinclair. Dear oh dear.

There's also the term 'seniority'. Sterling proved he was worth the new contract he'd just signed, last season. However, he then has to earn another, which he hasn't done this season. Last season he needed to justify his new contract and the manager's and board's faith in giving him it. He did that.
I pull up Rodgers on a lot of things, but he's bang on the money (no pun intended) when he says that giving a young player, however talented or potentially talented, too much money too soon is dangerous, as it can make them think "they've made it", and then stop working, stop yearning to improve and learn.
That's a frailty of the human being. We can be too easily satisfied.

Look how he's hyped, how he's lauded. It's difficult enough for that not to go to his head. A huge contract at the age of 20 will just reinforce all the wrongs.

If he had stepped up this season and been the main man in the absence of Suarez and Sturridge then the kid deserves it. He didn't, he doesn't.

Dude's spot on when he says playing the different positions will prove to be invaluable as he hopefully develops, but Dude and I aren't Raheem's age. Experience and life years under our belt have taught us that. Brendan is trying to make up for Sterling's lack of that in the way he's handling him.

There's far too much expectation of praise and reward whilst no desire to shoulder responsibility and accept the blame when it's correctly placed at your feet, side by side with the former, in life now.

I f@ck up, I deserve my @ss to be kicked and I need to be humble enough to learn from it, understand what I need to do differently and achieve it next time. If I do well, that's what I was aiming to do in the first place, so mission accomplished. I don't expect a statue and the freedom of the city.

[Tes]

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/raheem-sterling-liverpool-contract-2015-premier-league/

We can all scoff at Arsenal but whilst we have spent 15 years talking about a new stadium they went ahead and built theirs. They are now showing a bit more ambition in the transfer market too. Top players want champions league football EVERY season, something else Arsenal can offer that we can't. We made lots of excuses but the fact is Sanchez chose them clearly ahead of us. Looking from the outside we're just not seen as a big player right now. We qualified for the CL, sold our one world class player who had only recently signed a huge deal, then armed with the best part of £100m went shopping at Southampton!!! Last season he was team mates with Luis Suarez and Steven Gerrard, who will it be next season? James Milner? Danny Ings? Fabian Delph? The mind boggles.

The timing of this interview is appalling and it leaves a bad taste in the mouth but it's hard to argue with some of the things he's saying. And why wasn't he offered a better contract in the summer? Probably because we're trying to do this thing on the cheap aren't we? If he leaves it will be terrible. Far more damning and damaging than when Torres or Suarez left. This is a kid and he's already sussed us out. If we can't even tie a 20 year old to the club then what does that say about us? It's easy to paint him as the villain in all of this but we haven't managed to sign Henderson up yet either have we? So I don't necessarily buy this line that it's just the club trying to drive a hard bargain. We're shelling out £450k a week on Johnson, Sturridge and Gerrard for God's sake. Lambert has been earning almost twice as much as Sterling all season long, think about that for a second. No wonder Henderson and Sterling might be feeling sold short a little bit. But this is clearly not just about money because putting these talks off has cost him a fortune, it's also about ambition and it should really wake one or two people up that a young boy seems to be more ambitious than one of the world's biggest clubs. The truth hurts sometimes though and nobody wants to accept it so they blame the player and his agent for being greedy or start comparing him to Scott Sinclair. Dear oh dear.

I hate it when the owners' or the purse string puller's apparent ambitions or the limits of them are portrayed as 'ours'.

I don't think we're doing it on the 'cheap'. We've always been one of the best payers in the league, despite not being the 'richest' by any quantifier. We've handed out hugely generous contracts without getting our money's worth in success.

We don't know for sure what Hendo and Sterling have been offered, at least not in it's entirety. As we're moving towards a more incentivised form of contract, then if players' basics alone are as high as £100k a week, we're hardly doing on the cheap. What do all the incentives add up to? What's the total packet worth if the players achieve what is being incentivised.
And what's wrong with a decent basic but earning a portion by actually achieving successes?

[Tes]

We can all scoff at Arsenal...............

Can we? Do we?   I doubt it.

[Tes]

but the fact is Sanchez chose them clearly ahead of us.

London. His family wanted to live in London. Don't underestimate how 'well known' London is throughout the world and how little the rest of country has even been heard of - as a place to live, not necessarily in footballing terms.

[Martinmarx]

And why wasn't he offered a better contract in the summer? Probably because we're trying to do this thing on the cheap aren't we? If he leaves it will be terrible. Far more damning and damaging than when Torres or Suarez left. This is a kid and he's already sussed us out. If we can't even tie a 20 year old to the club then what does that say about us? It's easy to paint him as the villain in all of this but we haven't managed to sign Henderson up yet either have we?

I don't follow you here Edward mate. First you say "why didn't we give him a contract in the summer" next you move on to say "This is a kid and he's already sussed us out". Which one's it gonna be matte, because it sure as fukc can't be both. We need to axe this trash kid and we need to do it now. Sell him for whatever cash we can get (if we can get Walcott we've made the best deal on this side of the turn of the century). His value is made in the virtual heaven of football and sure as fukc not on the pitch. He's had two full seasons to prove his worth, EVERYTHING he's achieved (nothing much really) he owes to this club and his manager yet you say "it's easy to paint him as the villain". Yes it is because he IS the fornicating ungrateful villain. I can't believe he went on an unsanctioned interview with BBC and the club acts like nothing happened. Torres, Suarez and now Sterling. The reason players don't want to come here is basically noone's taking this club seriously anymore and they're fukcing right too.

For the record, I do not consider Raheem Sterling a Liverpool player. The sooner he's gone the better.

[Martinmarx]

There's also the term 'seniority'. Sterling proved he was worth the new contract he'd just signed, last season. However, he then has to earn another, which he hasn't done this season. Last season he needed to justify his new contract and the manager's and board's faith in giving him it. He did that.
I pull up Rodgers on a lot of things, but he's bang on the money (no pun intended) when he says that giving a young player, however talented or potentially talented, too much money too soon is dangerous, as it can make them think "they've made it", and then stop working, stop yearning to improve and learn.
That's a frailty of the human being. We can be too easily satisfied.

Look how he's hyped, how he's lauded. It's difficult enough for that not to go to his head. A huge contract at the age of 20 will just reinforce all the wrongs.

If he had stepped up this season and been the main man in the absence of Suarez and Sturridge then the kid deserves it. He didn't, he doesn't.

Dude's spot on when he says playing the different positions will prove to be invaluable as he hopefully develops, but Dude and I aren't Raheem's age. Experience and life years under our belt have taught us that. Brendan is trying to make up for Sterling's lack of that in the way he's handling him.

There's far too much expectation of praise and reward whilst no desire to shoulder responsibility and accept the blame when it's correctly placed at your feet, side by side with the former, in life now.

I f@ck up, I deserve my @ss to be kicked and I need to be humble enough to learn from it, understand what I need to do differently and achieve it next time. If I do well, that's what I was aiming to do in the first place, so mission accomplished. I don't expect a statue and the freedom of the city.

I applaud you Sire on a most well written and well argued article! Brilliant!

[Tes]

Some far better news that I read yesterday, though it's not football related, is that Wilko Johnson is actually free of cancer.
He was diagnosed in late 2012 with pancreatic and given 10 months to live. So after doing a farewell tour, he also did an album with Roger Daltrey - two greats of British music together.

He lived well beyond the original time frame given and a surgeon hearing about his condition contacted him, and the upshot was that he had an operation (previously thought impossible) in April last year, which included the removal of his pancreas, spleen, part of his stomach, small and large intestines and the removal and reconstruction of blood vessels relating to the liver.

Nothing like some nice news.

Wilko then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn_nsI5F1G0

and with Roger Daltrey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeoKCJNI-k4 - brilliant, funny lyrics, especially the second verse.

[Ed]

Can we? Do we?   I doubt it.

Agree. I haven't been knocking Arsenal for years. Years ahead
of us, they have quietly and effortlessly achieved the height of
our ambition i.e. finish top 4 and have a new stadium. I remember
we were the first club to have sponsored shirts.

[Edward224]

We bottle it when it matters.

Terrible performance so far. Absolutely terrible.

[Ed]

    

[Edward224]

It's a pattern. Big away game, Rodgers has us sit off, concede possession and try to hit on the break. He worries too much about the other team. We're playing a half-press again, conceding possession in a vital area, and we don't have the midfield presence to knock them off their rhythm. I'm actually disgusted, for the first time since the Hodgson era.