Transfer Balls spots the rumours that Raheem Sterling is leaving Liverpool for Manchester United. The Daily Mirror says United will offer £25m for the England player. How it knows this is left unsaid. But, you know, “sources”.
ESPN says Liverpool would rather sell Sterling to Arsenal. The fee? Lots of money plus Theo Walcott and Kieran Gibbs.
The Star says Manchester City have £40m reserved for Sterling.
Not too long ago (‘hours’ – ed) Sterling was surely heading to Real Madrid, where he’d link up with former Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez.
Newly sat in the Real Madrid ejector seat, Benitez was very quickly reading aloud from the Real Madrid Big Book Of Transfers:
“We admire [Raheem], that’s no secret – but he is not one of our players so I can’t really comment on him.”
A Real Madrid comment is in actual fact a huge comment that Real want to buy Sterling.
As it is the lad’s gone nowhere.
Liverpool fans will get at least one more season of Brendan Rodgers, a man whose ability to smug it out is unrivalled.
After a meeting with Liverpool chariman Tom Werner and owners’ representative Fenway Sports Group (FSG) President Michael Gordon, Liverpool have agreed on a “comprehensive plan for improvement”. The meeting was “positive and progressive”.
Details are thin.
What will change?
The talk is that James Milner, Danny Ings, Christian Benteke and Nathaniel Clyne could be arriving at Anfield in the near future. The Times says 29-year-old Milner has agreed terms with Liverpool after rejecting a more generous contract offer to remain on Manchester City’s bench. The paper adds that Liverpool are in the hunt for a new goalkeeper.
That would be five new players Rodgers would have to mould into the team in quick time. Given the £110million-worth of new signings bought last summer, the squad is not being short-changed in the club’s quest to move on from last season’s post-Luis Suarez mediocrity, when they were most notably out-thought by Aston Villa and Stoke City and the momentum of that 2013/14 season title-surge was lost.
Rodgers could once rely on Luis Suarez’s brilliance and flashes of inspiration to mask any lack of tactical nous. Last season, the plan seemed to be for Raheem Sterling or Philippe Coutinho to do the same. When they failed Liverpool looked tame, witless and disorganised.
New players bought in by the club’s data and value-driven transfer committee failed to gel. Rodgers remained verbose, talking and talking a good game, continuing to make baffling selections and fussing over details.
One thing Liverpool can move on is to colour-in the grey areas between ownership and management. The club’s structure seems messy.
What is expected of Rodgers? Obviously, Champions’ League qualification and a cup are the targets, but if Rodgers’ Liverpool fails to deliver one or both will be be sacked?
It would be useful to know how Rodgers is being measured and what part FSG consider they’ve played in the club’s slide from the Premier League’s top four.
Football Balls: the intersection of media football fact and fiction spots the Sun’s story that “JURGEN KLOPP has made himself available to be next Liverpool manager”.
Has he? Klopp has left Borussia Dortmund. He’s a free agent. He’s pretty much made himself available to be manager any club.
Ken Lawrence writes:
The German, 47, has scrapped plans to take six months off after his last game as Borussia Dortmund boss in tomorrow’s German Cup final. And he has made it known he would be interested in taking over from Kop boss Brendan Rodgers at Anfield.
How did he make that interest known? The only quote the story provides is this:
“I am not tired. I haven’t had any contact with any other clubs but I am not planning a sabbatical.”
Mentions of Liverpool: none.
Lawrence then ends his story by noting:
Carlo Ancelotti is also a possibility for Liverpool after leaving Real Madrid.
Yeah, of course he is. Other managers with Premier League experience looking for work and, therefore by the Sun’s reckoning possible Liverpool head coaches, include: Steve McClaren, Sam Allardyce, Ian Holloway, Malky Mackay, Paul Lampbert, Harry Redknapp, Stuart Pearce, John Gregory, Danny Wilson and Gus Poyet.
Looking at that lot, Liverpool sticking with their current manager Brendan Rodgers doesn’t look such a bad option.
Raheem Sterling will not sign for Liverpool. No way. No how. It will not happen. Sterling wants a return to London, which means playing for either Arsenal or Chelsea. Fact.
Shy and retiring agent Aidy Ward is quoted as having told the Evening Standard:
“I don’t care about the PR of the club and the club situation. I don’t care. He is definitely not signing. He’s not signing for £700, £800, £900 thousand a week. He is not signing. My job is to make sure I do the best with them (my clients). If people say I am bad at my job, or they are badly advised it does not matter.”
He then called former Liverpool player Jamie Carragher a “knob”:
“Carragher is a knob. Everybody knows it. Any of the criticism from current pundits or ex-Liverpool players – none of them things matter to me. It is not relevant.”
And then talkSport says it “understands” that Ward said no such thing.
It’s very confusing. Is the Standard wrong? Is talkSport talking rubbish? Is there an imposter pretending to be an agent advising Raheem Sterling?
Laughing all the way to the bank
Last night the BBC reported that Raheem Sterling was arranging his Liverpool departure. Given that the talented, underpaid and pragmatic Sterling had chosen to tell the BBC of his desires for glittering success and admiration for Arsenal in a TV interview, the source is less speculative than most. The BBC had its scoop.
And one day on how does the The Sun cover the story of Raheem Sterling’s departure from Anfield? Like this:
It’s an ‘exclusive’ to every one of those Liverpool fans who get their football news only in the Sun – which is to say none of them.
You can read Raheem’s story here, and realise why his leaving Liverpool is no great shock.
Liverpool gerrard hair
There we were, busy painstakingly compiling a season-by-season photographic retrospective appraisal of Steven Gerrard’s 17-year hair portfolio only for the bloody BBC to go and steal our thunder by cobbling this little beauty together…
Steven Gerrard: 17 seasons, one sensible haircut. Immaculate.
You just can’t buy consistency like that. What a legacy.
Spotter: Pies
Who said that Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers was a genius? Says Rodgers…
“Three months ago I was a tactical genius, performing to a good level.”
Former Liverpool great Steve Nicol tells the Daily Mail:
“I’d love to know who was calling him a ‘tactical genius’, Brendan. When was he a tactical genius? When was he a tactical genius against Ludogorets, against Real Madrid, against Basel? When was he a tactical genius against Aston Villa in the FA Cup? I mean, come on.”
What kind of wally would have called Rodgers a genius? Well, Nichol might not be a Daily Mail reader because it was that paper’s Adrian Durham who opined:
“Rodgers did the legwork, learned his trade, soaked up knowledge and look where he is now. Tactical genius. That’s what Brendan Rodgers is.”
He wasn’t the only one:
Peter Fraser on Sky: “Liverpool’s Brendan Rodgers should be considered a managerial genius whatever happens”
Of course, Rodgers has mentioned his genius before. This is from 2014:
“I know how it goes. Six or seven months ago I was the manager of the year and I was going to be this and that, tactically this and tactically that, and now, because we have lost two world-class players, I am useless. But I accept that. I must have just dreamt that about Liverpool playing 3-4-3 in the last game [the Capital One Cup victory at Bournemouth]. What do people think that was, a bit of luck? A British coach playing 3-4-3? A foreign coach doing that would be a tactical genius. I imagine people think I fell into that system through a stroke of luck or something.”
So. Who called Rodgers a tactical genius? Well, Rodgers did…
Jordan Henderson has penned a new five-year deal to play for Liverpool. Good news for Liverpool fans. And at £100,0o0-a-week, it’s good news for Henderson, who will just be able to afford a season ticket at top-flight boxing. (Tickets for the Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao’s fight are yours for £100,000 each. It makes £60 to watch your team play Arsenal at the Emirates look like a steal.)
Writing in the Times, Giles Smith wonders if Henderson is going to re-sign for another of his clients: Nivea.
…a deal that has already yielded comedy gold. Indeed, if there was a Bafta for Best Look To Camera By A Footballer In A Narrative-Based Commercial (and now there should be), Henderson would have swept it away for a lifetime.
It is a cracker:
But what does it all mean for men? It’s the decline of man: the steady emasculation of our role models.
Posted: 25th, April 2015 | In: Liverpool, Reviews, Sports, The Consumer | Comment
Aston Villa beat Liverpool 2-1 in an entertaining FA Cup semi-final. But what were the important scores, the ones newspapers award players?
Martin Samuel says Liverpool’s one goal was lucky. The Daily Mail writer says Philippe Coutinho’s shot went in via a “fortuitous deflection”.
But one page on, the Mail’s Laurie Whitwell says of Coutinho:
“Super run and finish.”
From lucky to super in a page.
The Mail awards Coutinho a score of 7 our of 10. That makes him better than 8 Aston Villa players. But the Daily Mirror says every Villa player was better than every Liverpool player.
Such are the facts…
Paul Sorene
Not Raheem Sterling. 3 May 1998: Paul Gascoigne and Paul Merson of Middlesbrough celebrate a return to top flight football after a Nationwide Division One match against Oxford United at the Riverside Stadium in Middlesbrough, England.
LIVERPOOL’S Raheem Sterling is part of a trend. The shisha smokin’, laughin’ gas inhalin’ star is just the latest footballer to be “involved in off the field controversy”. Well, so says the Daily Mail, which delivers five players who erred.
Here, Sportsmail details five other misbehaving stars involved in similar incidents away from the field.
According to the Daily Mail not breaking the law in the privacy of your own home is controversial. Raheem Sterling is now apparently in a ‘bad boys’ group with these bright young things:
Jack Wilshere: smoking tobacco.
Read the rest of this entry »
Liverpool fans looking to the papers for news of Raheem Sterling will be confused. The Daily Mirror leads its sports section with the news that the Liverpool star is wanted by Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United and Manchester City. Having namechecked the top sides, the Mirror says Sterling will head to Manchester City for £30m. John Cross says City are “confident of getting their man”.
But over in the Daily Mail, its top sports story is that “Sterling suitors” have seen the photos of him with a shisha pipe and a balloon filled with nitrous oxide and been “put off” by his “bad behaviour”.
Over two pages the Mail says Arsenal are “not keen” on Sterling, the Gunners prefering a “good Christian boy who says his prayers every night and rarely, if ever, touches alcohol”.
Eh? Smoking sends you to Hell?
After that balls, the Mail says Liverpoool will “demand £40m upwards” for their player – which makes you wonder why City are confident of getting him for £10m less?
Oh, and for more balls about Sterling being a role model, the Mail says the 20-year-old has already influenced a younger man – that’s Liverpool’s 19-year-old Jordan Ibe holding his own pipe.
Such are the facts.
Posted: 15th, April 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
The Daily Raheem Sterling delivers a bumper crop of news and views in the tabloids. Today Sterling coverage reaches peak tabloid as The Liverpool players is all over the Sun’s front and back pages.
On the front page we see a photo of Raheem holding an orange balloon to his lips. It’s party time, but there’s no jelly and ice-cream to go with this balloon. The Sun says Sterling is inhaling not exhaling. It says the balloon is “apparently filled with dangerous legal high ‘hippy crack'”. Inside the Sun, over two pages, we learn that the image comes from a short video in which Sterling inhales twice before he “seems to pass out”.
The Sun adds: “The footage is thought to have been filmed at his £1.5m home days before Liverpool’s Premier League clash with Newcastle”.
Apparenly. Seems. Thought. So much for the facts. What else do we know? Well, the Sun’s doctor Carol Cooper tells us that nitrous oxide, which is the more official name for ‘hippy crack’, can cause hallucinations and cause the user to lapse into a coma.
Read the rest of this entry »
It’s the Daily Raheem Sterling – a look at the Liverpool player in the news.
The Sunday Mirror has news that Sterling, 20, has been photographed smoking a shisha pipe during a night out with friends. Was this a bonding session with Arsenal’s smoking Jack Wilshere and Wojciech Tomasz Szczęsny?
The picture of him inhaling on the bright orange pipe during a night out with pals emerged just hours after he upset his army of fans by snubbing a £100,000-a-week contract. Experts warn a single shisha session could be equivalent to smoking up to 200 cigarettes.
In case you were less than bothered at what a top athlete does in his spare time and find ludicrous the claim that a drag on a shisha is the same as smoking 200 fags, the Mirror trills:
The image will shock team-mates and parents of youngsters who idolise the winger, 20.
As ever with such things, we are invited to think of the children. From being an adult having a legal puff , Sterling is now a danger to your kids.
The Daily Mirror says Sterling was heckled by Liverpool fans as he modeled the team’s new kit. As Sterling took the stage to enthuse about the outfit, a voice shouted:
“Make sure we see you in it next season.”
Others cheered. Sterling, quick as a flash, said nothing.
ESPN says Sterling will ignore the hecklers and not sign a new Liverpool contract. How do ESPN know this? It reports:
Raheem Sterling will not sign a new contract at Liverpool this season as he waits to see what offers come his way this summer, a well-placed source has told ESPN FC.
An anonymous source says so, that’s why. And if you can’t trust an anonymous source, who can you trust?
Over in the Liverpool Echo the news is that Liverpool already have a ‘new’ Sterling:
Jordon Ibe can be just like Chelsea and Arsenal target Raheem Sterling – Brendan Rodgers
Is that what Rodgers said? No quite, no. The Liverpool Post has Rodgers quotes on Ibe in full:
“They’re both very exciting, but they’re different types of players,” Rodgers said.
Over on Sky Sports, Sterling is being talked about by his Liverpool teammate Lucas Leiva:
“It’s incredible how much he (Sterling) can achieve,” said Lucas. “He’s got all the potential and of course there has been a lot of talk about his contract situation but he’s dealing with it well on the pitch.
“Off the pitch he is getting advice that he thinks is best for him. My advice for him would be to play football – although it is hard to give advice. He knows what’s best for him as do his agent and family.”
So. No news, then…
Posted: 12th, April 2015 | In: Arsenal, Liverpool, Sports | Comment
Raheem Sterling was heckled yesterday. As Liverpool FC paraded their new kit, the 20-year-old was singled out for treament by one Liverpool fan. As Sterling took the stage to enthuse about the outfit, a voice shouted:
“Make sure we see you in it next season.”
Others cheered. Sterling, quick as a flash, said nothing.
Away from the rarified environs of a BBC studio, the inside of an hermetically sealed supercar and unable to dodge catcalls by swaddling his head between two massive headphones as he walks from the team bus, this was Sterling exposed.
And we loved it.
Heckling is pretty much the only occassion when the masses get to address their leaders and idols.
Let’s hear more of it…
Posted: 11th, April 2015 | In: Liverpool, Sports | Comment (1)
Transfer balls looks at today’s reporting on Liverpool star and Arsenal target Raheem Sterling.
The Daily Star leads its sports coverage with news that Sterling is off to Arsenal. David Woods has an “exclusive”. He “can reveal” that Arsenal are buying Sterling. He can also”reveal” that Liverpool are buying Arsenal’s Theo Walcott.
Well, maybe.
Overlooking the obvious fact that this “exclusive” was first reported in a fact-free Daily Mirror story two weeks ago, the Star’s scoop contains not a single fact about either player. Woods says Arsenal would pay Walcott plus £20m for Sterling. Given the figure of £50m touted for Sterling, that values Walcott at £30m.
How he arrives at those sums is through the process of ‘guesswork’.
It is utter balls.
We do hear from Arsenal in the Sun, where team manager Arsene Wenger says:
“We have a core of five or six players who have been here for the last seven years and we wants to keep that nucleus.”
Does that group include Walcott, who joined Arsenal in January 2006? It’s unclear because the Daily Express quotes Wenger thus:
“We now have a core of players, a good balance of players…who have been here for up to seven years and a few that arrived one or two seasons ago. We have a good balance.”
Walcott arrived at Arsenal nine years ago. Given how guarded and careful Wenger is with his words, it might well be that Walcott, who will have just one season remaining on his curent deal at this season’s end, is on his way out.
Such are the facts
Posted: 10th, April 2015 | In: Arsenal, Liverpool, Sports | Comment
The Daily Stelring: a look at media stories on Liverpool star Raheem Sterling.
Writing in the Daily Mirror, former Liverpool great Robbie Fowler says Sterling “would be crazy to leave”. He begins his open letter:
“Raheem Sterling has been buried under such an avalanche of advice over his future that he must think his head is about to explode. So, instead of adding to that blizzard, I have a very simple message for him.”
That simple message goes on for 29 paragraphs.
Kaboom!
Read the rest of this entry »
‘Former Liverpool full-back’ Andrea Dossena, 33, has been arrested on suspicion of shoplifting. The Italian, currently running out for Leyton Orient in League One, was arested along with a 31-year-old woman for allegely shoplifting at Harrods, the Knightsbridge superstore.
Metropolitan Police state:
“Police arrested a 33-year-old male and a 31-year-old woman on April 7 on suspicion of shoplifting at Harrods. They were taken to a west London police station. Both the man and woman have been bailed to a date in late April, pending further enquiries.”
He’s not the first man who have worn Liverpool red to have shoplited:
“I grabbed a few pens and paper from Woolworths and made a dash for the door but the security guard grabbed me. I thought it was all over. I thought the club would drop me. And I was convinced the school would expel me.”
And, of course, the greatest of them all…
“The biggest one was the toilet seat,” he says. “I was with a mate who was doing up his bathroom and he wanted to buy a set where you get everything together. I’d never bought a bathroom like that in my life, and neither had he, so we banged it on the trolley. But we took out the toilet seat and got another one that had a slow-close lid so it wouldn’t trap his kid’s fingers.
“What we didn’t know was that it was £2.35 more than the one that should have been in the box. Then we went through the till, my mate paid for it and then this security guy stopped us and said he had been watching us on CCTV and seen us swapping the toilet seats.”
Spotter: Liverpool Echo
Transfer Balls looks at Raheem Sterling in today’s news. It’s going to be a busy summer for the Liverpool striker. To save you the bother of reading a myriad different publications, we’ll round-up the day’s Sterling news:
Barney Ronay wonders in the Guardian if Sterling is really all that special:
Among the assorted soundbites swirling about in the wake of that unauthorised BBC interview it is the regurgitation of Brendan Rodgers’ claim last year that Sterling is “the best young player in Europe” that seems most startling, and indeed illuminating… The best young player in Europe is an Englishman who has never scored a goal in the Champions League, never won any kind of trophy, and never made any real impact against one of the heavyweights of European or international football. Really?…
Only in the overheated Premier League could a series of promising moments lead to some apparently serious talk of a £50m transfer fee. The real point here is that beyond the island borders of the World’s Most Excitable League, European football is awash with equivalent fine young talent in Sterling’s part of the pitch…
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 7th, April 2015 | In: Liverpool, Sports | Comments (2)
Writing in the Times, Rory Smith nails Raheem Sterling’s issue with Liverpool.
Sterling has turned down £100,000-a-week to stay at the club and, reportedly, said he’d not even accept £180,000-a-week to play for Liverpool. He also denies all any accusations that he’s money-grabbing. Sterling, says Sterling, only craves more titles. Success is his only driver
Says Smith:
“Football’s morality: mercenary bad, fair-weather friend good.”
What price loyalty? That question to you, Raheem…
Posted: 6th, April 2015 | In: Liverpool, Sports | Comment (1)
Raheem Sterling is all over the Sunday sports sections. The Liverpool tyro – Liverpool’s best player in their 4-1 defeat to Arsenal – is going nowhere.
But he might be. Keeping hold of a very good young English player who sees glory elsewhere is not easy.
And Brendan Rodgers isn’t helping. The Sunday Times leads with “Rodgers escalates war over Sterling”. Rodgers says Sterling has been turned by his agent, Aidy Ward.
“I’ve had a good chat with [Sterling], gave my opinion. This is a young kid who has been advised to do something else. You’re not a 20-year-old boy who picked up the phone and asks to speak to the BBC. You don’t do it. And him in particular.”
Rodgers is a patient, intelligent man. But calling Sterling a “boy” is foolish. Telling him that he’s easily led by the big bad agent and not capable of speaking for himself is hardly going to win hearts and minds in the ‘war’.
Sterling has two more years to run on his contract. Can Liverpool in that time challenge for the title? When Sterling looked at his teamates and the wreckage Arsenal wrought on Liverpool’s Champions’ League ambitions, did he see his future at Anfield?
How likely is that?
Not very…
cfrontpages.
Liverpool lost 4-1 to Arsenal in the Premier League. The game delivered a severe blow to Liverpool’s chances of Champions’ League qualification. But how does Liverpool’s Daniel Sturridge respond? Well, on Twitter he’s having a par-teeee:
As @andrew_warden notes:
That awkward moment when you are paid to promote something but your team lost today! :/
Sick as a tweeter…
Is Raheem Sterling leaving Liverpool? Is he going to play for Arsenal. Is he a greedy sh*t or a footballer who knows his worth? Questions abound on the matter of former QPR player Raheem Sterling. And the tabloids lead with the news.
The Sun says Sterling is worth £50m. The paper says he could be on his way to Chelsea. Or Arsenal. Or Manchester City. The Sun says the “race” is on to sign Sterling. It’s race doped with money.
The Daily Mail also leads with news that Chelsea are in the “race” to sign Sterling.
Is it? But Brendan Rodgers says Sterling should be”honoured” to play for Liverpool, adding that the player has two and a half years to run on his current deal and is going nowhere.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Daily Mirror says Liverpool are keen on Inter Milan’s Mateo Kovacic. On March 26, the paper reported:
The Reds will send scouts to watch the 20-year-old play for his country Croatia against Norway on Saturday.
The Liverpool scouts had a wasted trip because on the same day Football-Italia reported:
“I saw Kovacic. He has a cruciate knee ligament injury,” chief medic Boris Nemec told 24sata.hr. “He still feels a lot of pain and there is absolutely no chance he’ll be able to play against Norway.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Transfer balls looks at the Daily Mirror’s lead story: Raheem Sterling could be leaving Liverpool for life at Arsenal. Recalling how well things went when Arsenal last tried to buy a Liverpool player – a failed bid of £40m plus £1 for Luis Suarez – investigating the veracity of this story seems worthwhile.
Daily Mirror back page
John Cross reminds readers that former QPR starlet Sterling has yet to sign a new deal at Liverpool. He says a raft of big clubs are after the player, mentioning Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Manchester City. Cross then states that “City will make a big bid” for the England player.
That’s pretty much the entire back-page news story. It continues two pages inside, with Cross saying that “Arsenal are serious contenders” and have made “discreet enquiries about Sterling’s availability”. Given that the Gunners’ apparent discretions are back-page news, you wonder what form the club’s enquiries took: a word in the ear of the Mirror’s Arsenal reporter, perhaps?
Over in the Mail, news is that Sterling will not sign for Liverpool “even if Liverpool offer £180,000 a week”. Says who? We’re not told? It’s just a fact that if Liverpool lose their minds and offer Sterling £180,000-a week to play for them he will not stay. Make it £180,001 and… yeah, maybe he will. Call his agent, Make the offer. See what occurs.
After that uter balls, over in the Express, their story is that Liverpool are interested in buying Arsenal’s Theo Walcott, who will be replaced at The Emirates by Marco Reus. Really? Reus is the player the Express reported had agreed to join Real Madrid and the Mirror said had joined Barcelona.
Such are the facts in the trusty tabloids…
Posted: 30th, March 2015 | In: Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City, Sports | Comment
MAY 13: Captain, Thiago Silva (L) and Mamadou Sakho (R) of PSG celebrate in front of the fans after winning Ligue 1 during the Paris Saint-Germain Trophy Ceremony at Trocadero plaza on May 13, 2013 in Paris, France. (Photo by Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images)
Liverpool news now. The Sun says that Mamadou Sakho used only to speak French to his teammates. Is that good or bad? The Liverpool team that lined up against Manchester United featured five native English speakers. So. Speaking just in French is less than ideal.
But the best bit about the Sun’s story is that Mamadou is quoted thus:
“Learning the language has been the hardest part of adapting to life in England. I get very frustrated when I can’t express myself. Some people told me to speak in French, saying it would enable me to relax a little. But when I spoke French on the pitch, calling for substitutions and similar matters, nobody understood what I was saying. I thought, ‘oh no, this is pointless!’ and felt I really had to learn English. It took me some time, but I’m fine now.”
His English is superb.
But we do wonder if when Mamadou was speaking only in French, he was doing so with the affectation of a broad Scouse accent – you know, in the same vein as Liverpool lad Joey Barton speaks French to the people of Marseilles:
