Football Insider‘s Pete O’Rourke published a piece yesterday about winger Raheem Sterling and his uncertain future at Chelsea.
Amusingly, the piece was published at 1pm yesterday, 15 minutes into the game and long before Sterling had made himself into the villain of the day with his shocking performance, his dreadful penalty and his embarrassing free kick.
So if the plan was to sell him before kick off, imagine what the plans are like now?
The hard thing, as ever, will be his £300k a week contract. This makes him a club priority to sell, but equally makes it particularly hard to shift him.
O’Rourke’s exclusive claims that Sterling is “unlikely to join another Premier League club if he leaves Chelsea this summer,” and given the number of clubs outside the English top flight who can pay that sort of money, that really leaves few options.
To us, it seems there are three options now. Either we do a Lukaku-like series of loans to teams willing to split his wages as we gradually see out his contract, or we get lucky and a club in Saudi Arabia wants him, or we just grit our teeth and try to make things work.
Unfortunately for fans who want him out, that last option is definitely the most likely as it stands.
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