No young player in European football is analysed by the same uniquely pejorative criteria as Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling.
This is a 23-year-old with 22 goals across all competitions, whose goalscoring contributions to arguably the most dominant Premier League title win of all time have only been exceeded by Sergio Aguero. Amongst Premier League followers and England fans, Sterling’s explosive uplift in goalscoring form this season, doubling his previous career best for a single campaign, should be celebrated.
And yet, the Manchester City forward is only ever really judged upon his mistakes and flaws; those rushed finishes to scupper gilt-edged chances, those wayward passes stifling vibrant City attacks, those mazy dribbles that inadvertently slip into blind alleys.
Of course, Sterling’s greatest misgiving – his notorious lack of composure in front of goal – is a glaringly noticeable one. But the attention and scrutiny it’s received has built such a hyperbolic, negative narrative that it often blinds us from what Sterling actually gives to this exceptional Pep Guardiola team.
Sterling’s last two Premier League appearances provide the perfect case in point. City lost the first against Manchester United but won the second against Tottenham, yet the post-match analysis on both occasions was indiscriminate – almost entirely centred around the chances the 37-cap Three Lions star missed.
That’s despite him playing a hand in the two goals that proved to be decisive at Wembley, winning a penalty off Hugo Lloris before poking past the Spurs goalie himself, and changing the entire complexion of the Manchester derby upon swapping places in attack with Bernardo Silva.
Before the switch around the 20-minute mark, there was nothing to choose between City and Manchester United; in the 25 minutes before half time, they’d scored twice with Sterling setting up Ilkay Gundogan.
Those incisive moments of course earned honourable mentions but were overshadowed by the focus on the two chances Sterling missed to put the Manchester derby out of sight, and his failure to convert at Wembley with the goal at his mercy after rounding Lloris – never mind the fact Sterling found the net at a corner just a minute or so later.
There’s no question Sterling has a knack for missing big chances, but that’s a common trait amongst the division’s top scorers. According to what the Premier League defines as a ‘big chance’, Mohamed Salah, Harry Kane, Alvaro Morata, Sergio Aguero and Alexandre Lacazette have all missed more than his eleven this season. Those players though, are never vilified for it with anywhere near the same level of vitriol.
Regardless, Sterling is younger than all of the above, which is why we shouldn’t expect him to be the perfectly finished article just yet anyway. And when the City star’s form is compared to players under the age of 25 from Europe’s top five leagues, it’s clear Sterling is amongst the top of the class.
Only three players in that age bracket have scored more league goals than him this season – Paulo Dybala, Kane and Lyon’s Mariano – and only six players have bettered his eight assists. In terms of all-round forward play too, Sterling ranks between 14th and 25th for shots, dribbles and key passes per game, less impressive than his comparative output yet nonetheless evidence of a holistically strong impact for a player of his age.
Compare him to arguably the most promising young forwards in Ligue 1, La Liga, Serie A and the Bundesliga too. Kylian Mbappe is a £166million signing while Marco Asensio is billed as Real Madrid’s next icon and a £120million target for Chelsea, yet Sterling is never discussed as being worth anything remotely near that kind of money despite outscoring both this season in a tougher league.
In fact, he’s contributed to the same amount of league goals as Juventus star Dybala – who some have even tipped to eventually succeed Lionel Messi at Barcelona.
There’s admittedly a silkiness and composure to those players that Sterling seems to lack, something that can’t always be represented by statistics alone. But in terms of effectiveness, very few players Sterling’s age have exceeded him this season across the whole of Europe, so why does he so rarely receive the full credit that deserves?
Perhaps it’s because Sterling doesn’t seem like a young player anymore. He already has nearly 200 Premier League appearances under his belt and having made his Liverpool debut as a teenager, he’s been on the scene since the end of the 2011/12 season. Even though he’s just 23 years of age, he’s got plenty of miles on the clock already – some would argue, despite his fantastic form this season, that he probably should have reached this point a little sooner and already be looking further ahead.
Or perhaps it’s because there’s something inherently British about trying to bring down our biggest success stories – we’ve always preferred the romantically inevitable failure of the underdog, the ability to remain defiant amid disaster, to the golden boys seemingly born to pick up the accolades. There was more than a slight hit of envy when Alan Shearer responded to Sterling’s goal return this season by claiming; “I could score 20 goals for this City side.”
But perhaps there is something a little more sinister here, because for one reason or another there has always been a negative narrative attached to Sterling since he first emerged from the Liverpool academy setup.
First there were rumours of multiple children bred by multiple mothers, which proved to be completely untrue, and then there was the whole media circus surrounding his decision to leave a club that has won just a single trophy, the League Cup, since 2006 for another that has already tripled that total in the three years Sterling’s been there.
That was followed by endless reports on Sterling’s earnings, any other personal life gossip The Sun could throw at him and the almost inexplicable drive to put England’s shock elimination from Euro 2016 on his shoulders.
Now, Sterling’s having to fight claims that scoring the fourth-most goals of any Premier League player this season is merely a case of him flattering to deceive, that the chances he misses are more important than the ones he scores, that – according to Shearer – even retired players could score as many goals for City this season.
“The moment he can increase his average to score he will become one of the best players in the world. He missed two clear chances against United to make it 3-0 and 4-0 and he missed today. The moment he will improve that he will become a top, top, top player. He’s so dynamic, he has character, he is an excellent guy but we can think about it.
He did it much better than last season. The problem will be next season where he has to compete with what he has done. He has to work harder but he is able to learn he is going to win an important Premier League and that will help for his confidence and so on.”
And yet, while some of the negativity may lay in the genuine objective truth that Sterling’s shortcomings are somewhat unusual for a player of his abilities, and even more so in such a successful and talented team as this Manchester City side, there is the other side of the coin to consider – one that Guardiola alluded to himself after the win on Saturday.
If Sterling does start to convert those simple chances that seemingly allude him, if he does gain those few extra microbes of composure and if he does improve his decision-making in the final third, his goal tally and overall form won’t just be comparative with players his age – he’ll be up there with the very best players in the world.
Sterling’s missed eleven big chances this season; if all of those were converted, he’d have just two goals less than Salah and three more than Harry Kane – the two most potent goalscorers in the Premier League for 2017/18. Salah is someone Sterling can take direct inspiration from, and as Gary Neville points out Thierry Henry and Cristiano Ronaldo too. None of those started out as natural goalscorers, yet all drastically improved between the ages of 21 and 24.
Combined, Ronaldo and Henry scored 11 goals as 21-year-olds; as 24-year-olds, they amassed 42. Salah, likewise, scored 15 goals across all competitions for Roma at the age of 23, but two campaigns later, he’s on course to triple that total with Liverpool as a 25-year-old.
That’s the moment Sterling finds himself at this stage of his career – waiting to discover if he can make the step up to the same level as some of the Premier League’s all-time greats, by ironing out those mistakes and adding an extra dose of composure to his game.
If this season tells us anything though, it’s that even if Sterling’s goal returns were to mirror those Arsenal and Manchester United legends or even Salah’s for Liverpool this season, he still wouldn’t receive the full credit he deserves.
Perhaps Sterling just has to accept that, no matter what he does, he’ll always be judged on what he can’t do rather than what he can, and he’ll always be surrounded by a negative narrative for one reason or another.
For a young, English player whose only real crime has been to ruthlessly strive towards success, that’s a frustrating shame – one that reflects far more on the simplistic belligerence of his critics than Sterling as a footballer or a person.
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