The song with the chant that goes “Raheem Sterling, he’s top of the league” – which was part of the main soundtrack as Manchester City surged to four Premier League titles in five seasons – will not be heard at the Etihad Stadium this season but most likely will be heard rousingly at Stamford Bridge. Despite being hardly the wittiest of chants, it was nonetheless one of the more meaningful as an assertion of superiority with one of the reasons for it being highlighted.
A classy winner with a proven track record of scoring goals, Sterling could well be the player Romelu Lukaku failed to deliver, and at a fraction of the price too.
Sterling’s move to Chelsea is definitely a coup d’etat in more ways than one. For one, he costs less than half the amount they paid for Romelu Lukaku last summer and less than what Fernando Torres cost 11 years ago. This raises the prospect that, like N’Golo Kante before him, Sterling could be the next to win successive Premier Leagues with different clubs, with the second hopeful achievement being in Chelsea blue.
Chelsea acquiring Sterling for around the sum City paid in 2016 is about more than just securing value for money to mark the start of Todd Boehly’s regime. Sterling could well represent the first true Thomas Tuchel signing. Lukaku was supposed to be Tuchel’s flagship buy instead turned out to be a dud in an uneasy relationship that only served to cast doubt on the German’s role in the Belgian’s arrival last summer. Now at least the final piece in the jigsaw looks more applicable to Sterling – at least as far as the forward line is concerned.
Chelsea’s vacancy in attack last season is clearly exposed by the numbers, with 76 league goals last season while Liverpool had 94 and City 99. Mason Mount was their top scorer in the Premier League whose tally of 11 put him tied for 14th place in the division; the year before, Jorginho led the way with Chelsea with seven, leaving him joint 44th. If Lukaku was supposed to be the finisher, he was certainly left looking despondently one-dimensional and clearly unsuited to Chelsea’s possession game, loooking totally out of sorts like a static passenger, operating on a totally different wavelength as his team-mates.
Sterling, on the other hand, often suffers the ignominy of being underrated both as a finisher and a footballer. Yet, that said, only Lionel Messi and Sergio Aguero have scored more goals for Pep Guardiola and he has outscored Chelsea’s leading marksman in each of the last five Premier League seasons.
Sterling could also crucially be potent from a wider starting position, allowing Havertz to operate as a false nine. More importantly for Tuchel, Sterling has displayed his uncanny ability to adapt to the instructions of managers who have the propensity to micro-manage from a tactical perspective like Pep Guardiola, timing and angling his runs to suit the latter’s incisive, precise demands. Clearly Sterling can be the facilitator who has the flexibility to allow his manager to play a fluid forward line.
Tuchel could well be looking to amend his blueprint and play a variant of 4-4-2, despite his natural wing-backs and his finest remaining central defender, Thiago Silva, playing best in a trio. However, a willingness to change could reveal a latent frustration at their relative impotence. Admittedly very few forwards – Lukaku, Werner, Hakim Ziyech, Christian Pulisic, Callum Hudson-Odoi – have really excelled under him, with even Havertz being a case of potential not fully realized.
However that in no way knocks the stuffing out of Tuchel’s pie as he has in past succeeded in getting speedy forwards cutting in from the flanks to score prodigiously. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Kylian Mbappe both topped 30 league goals as statistically he has finished in the top 10 in each of the last four seasons for non-penalty goals per 90 minutes in the Premier League; last season, in what appeared to be a tad underwhelming for him, only Mohamed Salah had a higher expected goals per 90.
All said and done, he leaves City after stagnating for two years, benched often by Guardiola for the bigger games. Yet clearly his powers remain undiminished as Euro 2020 indicated.
For Chelsea, he seems to be a natural fit and an excellent price, regardless. Where the £98million signing Lukaku failed and was exiled a year later, Sterling on the other hand looks to be the man to take Chelsea to the top of the league. A forward with the track record of getting the goals to position a club right where it wants to be.