30 Mar 2015 21:11:18
Don't see anything wrong with Raheem holding off until the summer to decide about his contract.
While he's not been at his electric best this season he has been asked to play numerous positions, is only 20 and has still been our best striker this season even though he is not a striker.
He will want to see, as one of the best players of his age around, that the club are either in the Champs lge or have better signings lined up than last year's shambles when Suarez left to be replaced by Balotelli & Lambert, with Borini remaining.
I can see where he is coming from and hopefully this will result in better players being recruited and Raheem & Jordan signing on again.
Ball very much in the clubs court.
Let's hope the boys clearly not in the plans are moved on and quality not quantity is brought in.
30 Mar 2015 21:58:07
He wouldn't join a team with out CL probably thinks why stay with one
30 Mar 2015 22:39:54
Well he is not exactly 28 years old or even 25 years old who wants to make sure he doesn't finish his career without trophies or without playing CL (he played already this season by the way). He wants to see if we are in the CL? Well this is our role. He is not there to watch.His role is to bring us there not to wait and see if we get there. He is paid a lot of money to do exactly that.
And while he was far from being our worst player, there were too many games when he didn't show up. Which is ok if he is young and inexperienced and you cannot expect him yet to perform every game, but if this is the case I also cannot accept him behaving contract wise like RVP at his late 20s in Arsenal moving to ManU in order to make sure he doesn't end without trophies.
Re bringing quality players in the summer - it is hard to know in the summer the quality of players and how they will suit the team. 95 percent of peopel here thought at the end of the summer we had a fantastic transfer window. People have short memory, but people here talked about Ian Ayre as the greatest bargain catcher of all times. And easy to say now a lot of the buys were poor but it is not as if the club didn't try to strengthen the squad and spend a lot of money on it.
In any case Sterling is not our transfer committe - and he should rather focus on the (many) things that he still has to improve on his game. Because full of potential as he is he stil has a lot of work to do and in my view he will see a lot of bench if he moves to one of the other big clubs (partly because they have a lot more competition for his role).
Final word - we don't have money to bring huge names. Our only hope to bring A Benzema is if we sell him. I would be happy for him to stay but I don't think the club should band over becuase of his demands. He is not Luis Suzrez. At some point someone has to tell him enough is enough. I don't think all the rumurs are his fault, and amybe even what you sugest here as his motives are not his real ones and fair play to him for saying he want to pospone it for the summer but comes the summer, if I am the club I would give him 2-3 weeks to say yes or no and if no say goodbye adn try to get the most for him preferably from non PL team.
31 Mar 2015 06:59:19
Probably looking at the end to Gerrards career and thinking he should have went to Chelsea hahaha
But on a more serious note if I was 20 i'd sign up 5 years be 25 worth a lot more money and a better player (you'd imagine ) then reasses the situation
Then again who says he won't let the next contract run down aswell
So many ways to look at this but only Sterling knows what he wants
31 Mar 2015 07:44:39
I agree 100% fanoip that we had a good long term transfer window but a terrible one in the striking department which we all commented on at the time left us very weak and too reliant on a striker who cannot stay fit.
Sterling has a long way to go in terms of his development but if we seriously want to get back to the top we must retain players like this and show him we are ambitious as other clubs will.
If he extends his contract I will be just as happy that the club have evidenced this to him as him staying and if they can't then we will see where his career goes north or south, if I was a betting nan I would say north with medals galore!