Another week, another PR disaster for Team Sterling. It is six months to the day since I expressed my dismay on this page over a story about his contract negotiations and here we are again.
There has been much focus on the fact Raheem Sterling has turned down a contract worth around £100,000 per week. He reportedly wants £150,000. He is being perceived as flashy and cocky but that is not the young man I got to know. He was quiet, humble and eager to improve.
But after that woefully misjudged interview with the BBC, four key topics have arisen and I want to examine them.
1) ‘It’s not about the money — this time last year I would have signed straight away.’
So it’s Liverpool’s fault, then, for their timing ‘being off’? I’m sorry but that’s just nonsense. At this stage of last season, Sterling and Liverpool were on fire, with Brendan Rodgers calling him the ‘best young player in Europe’. No doubt that line has been used in negotiations.
Crucially, his contract still had more than three years to run. Very rarely do clubs rip up a player’s terms with that length of time on their deal - never mind one as young as Sterling - to give them a big pay rise. You don’t normally get rewarded after a few good months with that long left.
As for talking about the Champions League and winning trophies, the implication is that Liverpool are struggling to do that but, already, he has challenged for the title last season and the FA Cup this season. That’s your job as a Liverpool player: to deliver big targets and meet expectations. If you can’t do that, why should you get extra money?
After we won the Champions League in 2005, I signed a new contract but it was still incentivised. So why can’t Sterling sign a contract with incentives in? If he wins trophies and is successful, he will get the money he wants.
0 comments:
Post a Comment