Prime R9 and Messi didn’t have that lol
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Prime Ronaldo? not sure…prime Messi? Oh most definitely!!
Paraphrasing someone in Talksports -
“It’s bizarre that a player, who is considered bad enough to be stripped of his number, relegated to the B-team & desperately being offloaded by a club that finished 6th, is considered a good acquisition for a club that came second last season and is competing for the title.”
I really hope he goes back to Chelsea with a winner’s medal.
The Chelsea (or Tottenham) fan who said/wrote that should be more concerned about his club buying players for ridiculous sums, giving them ridiculous wages (and lifetime contracts to prOteCT theR ValUE), and then seelling them out to bigger clubs who are fighting for the title for cheap, or loaning them and while still covering most of their wages…
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Maybe I phrased it wrong. He was criticising Chelsea for considering Sterling a worse player than say Mudryk.
If Sterling is good enough for a club challenging for the title, he should be good enough for Chelsea.
At this very moment Sterling definitely isn’t worse than Mudryk, he definitely isn’t as bad as Mudryk, although I believe there’s still potential in Mudryk.
I can understand them prioritising younger players atm considering they can’t win anything now anyway, but that doesn’t mean loaning Sterling isn’t a very good deal for us.
Saka’s better. 
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Sterling is on a bad contract and so my theory is that the higher-ups said that he’d either have to renegotiate his contract or be shut out of the team. If he was getting circa 150k-180k a week he’d still be playing for Chelsea.
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I hate it when clubs punish players for a bad contract given by that very club.
Negotiate better.
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Not to mention he was our literal last resort signing too and only done to plug in the gap left by the departure of Eddie and Nelson. We clearly had our eye on other wide players who weren’t available at the time so we ended up with a last minute loan deal for Sterling.
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Yep. My feeling is we were quite serious about Nico, but since we couldn’t struck that deal we moved to searching for a short term alternative.
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I think we weren’t even looking personally. We were probably fine to go with Nelson as a 6th choice forward until Chelsea got desperate.
From most accounts I’ve read, Chelsea were the ones that pitched us(and others) Sterling multiple times.
Initially we weren’t interested until they got even more desperate and offered him to us on Deadline Day with no loan fee and them covering more than half his wages.
If you work it out, we’re paying more or less what we were gonna pay Nelson for Sterling.
We may have actually banked some money too if Fulham offered us a loan fee too.
You’re saying we got Sterling because Chelsea persuaded us to do so?
I think Arsenal wanted Sterling for a bit longer than deadline day but kept the poker face to see how Chelsea would fold & make it a financially great offer for us.
I would even speculate that we got in Sterling’s agent’s ear to make it untenable for Chelsea.
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Yeah, I can buy that. It was mentioned that Sterling was fixated on going to Arsenal.
I think we were open to get him off of Chelsea but only on our terms. I don’t think the teams that were interested in Nelson popped up at the last minute. There was probably a communication to Nelson and his agents to sound out his options.
It’s a great piece of business give the low cost and low risk nature of the deal. Knows Mikel, has operated at an elite level, title winning and big game experience etc.
He’s been a top bracket performer for years and will go down as one of the best attackers of the PL era.
Looking at his goal record, he’s currently 19th on the all-time PL scorer list with 123 goals. Fowler and Defoe are 8th and 9th with 163 / 162 goals respectively. Sterling should back himself to get past those 2 into the top 10 list if he stays in the league for another few years.
At minimum he is a substantial upgrade on Nelson. At best he may even become a starter for us. He’s given all the right signs - looks hungry, the attitude and desire is there. I’ve got high hopes that this signing takes us over the line.
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Nobody is ever giving Chelsea any money for Sterling
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Entirely depends on whether he’s truly washed or not, he has three years remaining so contract likely isn’t getting ripped up.
If he shows he still is a top level player (which I highly doubt) then teams could be willing to pay, Lukaku was a similar situation and Chelsea still got some money back in the end.
Suppose we’ll see, but I just can’t see anyone paying good money for him with the wages he is on.
I just don’t see there being a massive turnaround from Chelsea desperately trying to get someone to take him, and having to pay over half of his wages and get no loan fee, to clubs deciding to not only aign him permanently but also pay Chelsea a fee while trying to offer Sterling terms he’d find acceptable.
But stranger things have happened, granted.
Thought the same about Lukaku but they managed to get a fee in the end.
Depends though on how well Sterling does with us and whether he proves he can still do it at a high level.
Sterling’s financial demands also play a big part. Lukaku took a pay cut to join Napoli, Sterling would have to do the same at his next club if he moves on a permanent move.