Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
A good day to bury bad news turned into a good day to bury bad news. chelsea football club Announce Raheem SterlingDeparture will take place two and a half hours before kickoff on Wednesday. Later that night, They beat up a man who was bound by their past Even earlier, after Antonio Conte had a fairly successful spell at Stamford Bridge.
Beating Napoli in Italy is the best result Liam Ronnie OrA short tenure and one of Sterling’s best players since he last played for the Blues. This leaves Chelsea sixth in the Champions League standings: Impressive, even for a club that has spent around £1.6bn in less than four years.
About £47.5 million of this was invested in British pounds. His total cost, including wages – a fraction of which were paid by Arsenal only marginally less when he was loaned out last season – plus signing and agent fees and a potentially sizable contract-break return, must be in excess of £100m; for Chelsea’s moneyed men, it’s an expensive embarrassment.
Chelsea have scored 19 goals in 81 games and are worth £100m, ranking 12th and 6th respectively in Sterling’s two seasons at the club. Stamford Bridge has had a number of purported statement signings over the years that failed to deliver on their promise – think Andriy Shevchenko, Fernando Torres or Romelu Lukaku – and Sterling ranks among the worst by pound.
His exit is news because something has changedbut otherwise this situation becomes increasingly inevitable. In other respects, he is not a Chelsea player: not in the Premier League or Champions League team, just as he was not taken to the Club World Cup. For a former Footballer of the Year and four-time Premier League winner, it represents a fall from grace. One man has been named in the Euro 2020 Team of the Year.
Sterling indirectly had a huge influence on Chelsea’s much-derided transfer policy. He was acquired the summer after Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly acquired him, and he’s a big, well-paid guy.
What followed was a shift towards buying young players, with the belief that their cheaper wages and unlimited contracts meant Chelsea were always going to be winners. A look at Mihailo Mudric’s transfer fee and subsequent fortune shows that wasn’t always the case, but Chelsea have since tried to avoid Sterling-style wages.
Yet he was in other ways a sign of things to come. Chelsea have Hopelessly addicted to signing wingers. They have acquired 11 players since acquiring Sterling (one of whom, Joao Felix, has actually joined them twice) and have lined up another player, Geovany Quenda, to arrive in the summer.
Meanwhile, one of the curious things about Sterling’s career at Chelsea is that Graham Potter He was sometimes used as a full-back but always insisted he did not do so. This was one of his ill-fated aspects. And someone else: He was acquired Thomas Tuchel And scored three goals in six games for the Germans. But then he was fired.
Porter and his clunky football feel particularly inappropriate for Sterling. He scored just one league goal for the Englishman. His time at Manchester City came in a more creative and consistent team, at a club with continuity where he often had some kind of goal, drop-back, far-post run. Chelsea don’t have that.
Sterling played under four head coaches in his first season. He has occasionally seen glimpses of his old self under fifth man Mauricio Pochettino in the 2023-24 season, home and away at Manchester City. He’s part of the bomb squad Less than one-sixth, Enzo MarescaIneligible for games seven and eight are caretakers Callum McFarlane and Rosenil.
As well as offering Arsenal a subsidized loan, Chelsea’s eager traders have worked hard to offload him. Mikel Arteta has helped him to a strong role at Manchester City, but not last season: the only goal in 28 games came against Bolton Wanderers in League One. Sterling left Chelsea and has not played for Chelsea for 20 months.
When he’s still only 31, this amounts to a sad decline. Chelsea are partly to blame, with Sterling the victim of their disarray. However, Sterling isn’t the only example of a prodigy who peaked relatively early and then went off the deep end. That makes signing a five-year contract at that salary unwise.
He is yet to play a game this season but by the end of the 2023-24 season, the 29-year-old will have made 631 appearances for club and country. This could impact a player whose strengths include energy and the ability to run past defenders.
Perhaps City saw this coming; his best seasons at the Etihad Stadium came between 2017 and 2020. But perhaps it was the re-adjustment to a different style of winger after the arrival of Erling Haaland that led to his departure.
But it is hoped Sterling can revive his career elsewhere. A club where he can play and where his predatory skills can come in handy. Chelsea turned Sterling into the highest-paid footballer not eligible to play this season. They may have thought he was a waste of money, but it was also a waste of his talent.