Fascinating debate about Raheem Sterling's situation at Chelsea 🔵

um do I think he's been treated unfairly I think a little bit yes U I think it could have been handled better okay the whole situation I think mistakes have been made on both sides uh I think Raheem Sterling should have been given more warning that Chelsea wanted to sell him this Summer he was only really told two weeks before uh transfer deadline day two days before the season started so in that respect yes I think he's been treated unfairly but Rahim Sterling has been in football a long time very good piece by Sam Wallace today in the telegraph he makes the point that Chelsea are treating Raheem Sterling in exactly the same way that Raheem Sterling treated Liverpool when he wanted to leave Liverpool he didn't want to sign a new contract um and he ended up going to Manchester City so Raheem Sterling has been in football a long time he knows how the business Works he knows it's ruthless and you know I think he could have been handled better but at the end of the day he's earning more than £300,000 a week he's still got three years left on his contract we live in a world where you know a lot of people are working on zero hours contracts when uh people don't have any employment rights really so yes I have some sympathy for him but on the other hand if you look at the bigger picture this is just what happens in football new owners coming new head coaches coming uh they decide they want to balance the books they decide a certain player is not for them he's earning too much uh and they let him know that they want to move in a different direction I think there there's a couple of things relating to this before we look at the other aspects of that your reference Sam's piece Sam also makes the point in this piece that yes this is football these are Venture capitalists in charge of Chelsea but and and players are bought sold but they're human beings and I think the the things that struck me about this is not only are they human beings but they have children they have families they are it isn't just the footballer who was affected by a decision to arbitrarily turn around and say thanks but no thanks after all of the messages prior to that had been complimentary you think about moresa in preseason he actually said that Sterling is an important player for him he was onour Club absolutely and then at the start of the season a a completely different thing but would he he he would have been asked a question about Raheem stering as a Chelsea head coach he's not going to turn around and say he's not an important player well that's what he said two days before the first game of the season but he wouldn't he wouldn't have said anything different he would if if he's asked a question he's always going to say I think in public I don't think so come on we you and I have been in football long enough to know football if if there are players that are not in a manager's plans a manager can say listen he's a good player but I'm not quite sure how he fits into my system at the moment and there's a diplomatic way to put it I mean we give herzler credit for example for the way that he's just coming to Brighton but he's so respectful about the way he talks about the players the opposition managers and the ecosystem that he stepped into in the Premier League and I think it's a very different messaging that comes out of Chelsea no I think what Chelsea would say from their perspective they would say that he played in Pre season uh Enzo moresa had a look at him and he decided especially with other players coming in like Xiao Felix that he didn't really need Raheem Sterling and he told him face to face at the end of the training session and Chelsea will do whatever they can to make sure that they can find him another club training session on the Friday before the match on Sunday which was and then also this week a public display of you know with the Pedro Neto situation you know number seven shirt is now Pedro Netto it's like you are gone but again Chelsea I think would say okay the number seven shirt he had the number seven shirt for one season we're not talking about George best you know we we're not talking about Zinedine zidan and and the number five you know this kind of thing happens in in football the whole time he'd been told that he wasn't going to stay at the club so it was a no-brainer that somebody else was going to take the number number seven well just one more thing and I know uh what we'll do as I'm making this point I'll just show show you Johnny North Cross piece because it's outstanding and it gives a full picture because we do need to be balanced around this and have a grownup conversation rather than just dismissing Chelsea as a joke and a circus he does suggest that they do look at the sub deck there they do have a plan uh they did make the Dodgers at the time the worst run team in America they did turn them into a successful model what he questions is whether you can transfer that to football and he's saying that with the Acquisitions that are made being made and the player trading um the mixed messaging and all of the things that don't feed into uh helping to create a settled structure within the team those things run counter to the the way that we've always seen things done before I know Gary Neville once said what is it that Chelsea know that all the other successful teams than the Premier League don't if you look at the top three teams in the Premier League uh this is my opinion here not Gary's um the Arsenal City and Liverpool have made four signings between them you look at the number of players that have bought being bought and sold between at Chelsea and it's far far more um and I I think that that's quite key um I want to show you this as well because this is a sole 11 from Chelsea there is so much to do around this and when you look at this team and the players in this team HTS has gone on to challenge for the title with Arsenal look behind him kovic went past 225 million pound worth of midfielder to score against Chelsea for Manchester City last weekend um I mean all around this team when you look at the Quality in there you see players that haven't exactly struggled when they've moved on you can I can't believe what they've done there they've put they put manager Thomas T assistant Marcio portino first team coach gr I think they're being a little bit T and Che a little bit T and stry but the general point is that when Chelsea went when when the new ownership went into Chelsea actually there wasn't that much to fix now you could argue as you have done off camera with me that they're venture capitalist and their whole business model I know from sitting across a table um with them in America they spelled out what they're trying to do they look at the data they look at the numbers they try to buy Young Players try to get them to realize their value they don't want to be going to clubs like Brighton and spending huge amounts of money all the time but again you're dealing with players and when you look at the man management at arsenal we give them so much credit on this show at Arsenal for the way that they manage players they look after players Pep Guardiola told you Vicki the players at City have everything they want they're settled they're a unit when they play there's a cohesion because at the club football comes first and to get them to play their best football they create the conditions for that to happen my only question with the whole strategy that I think is becoming clearer and clearer is that why wasn't that strategy in place from the very beginning because they did come in and they got rahem Sterling they put him on wages of 300 ,000 plus and now they're looking at that and thinking that's not sustainable I think I could be wrong but that's my understanding of the situation they have done brilliantly in reducing uh player wages you know they're they're under the the average for the for the Premier League so so they we can I think you can see clearly what's going on right now but my question would be why wasn't it that clear from the start they made some mistakes okay they made some mistakes at the start I think on rahee Sterling he's been a victim of circumstances I'm not anti- Raheem Sterling at all I think he's a brilliant player he's a fantastic role model uh he's been treated badly sometimes uh by the media as well that that's a discussion for for another day he's a brilliant player but he has been caught in the situation where Chelsea are trying to reduce their wage Bill and they think he earns too much I think the bigger picture is what do you think modern football is do you think it's a sport or a business we've gone down the road where it's become a business we're letting anybody pretty much buy premier league clubs as long as you pass a few tests so we've had States buying clubs we've got private Equity hedge funds these people are buying clubs for a variety of reasons but if you are a private Equity Firm you are buying a club because you believe it's in a distress State and you can improve things turn it around and make it worth a lot more and I think that's what the Chelsea owners are doing