Raheem Sterling felt his position at Manchester City had become untenable. He had been there seven years, enjoying remarkable success, but had been left “fuming, raging” by the sense that the sacrifices he had made had not been respected. “Everyone wants to feel wanted,” he said. “Football is no different.” And so he decided to leave.
He was 27 and an England regular. This was a big move for him. He had won four league titles at City, but this was a potentially career-defining move. He had been part of Brendan Rodgers’ glorious but doomed title charge at Liverpool. He had been an integral component in the Pep Guardiola machine. Where had similar allure? Where could he spend his notional peak that would not seem anticlimactic? He opted for Chelsea, who had won the Champions League a year earlier under Thomas Tuchel.
Sixteen months later, as Chelsea prepare to face City on Sunday, Sterling has lost his place in the England squad, his status fallen so far that every positive performance is framed as part of a fightback. Amid the storms of reinvention under Todd Boehly, Sterling is now on his fifth Chelsea manager. Life moves pretty fast at Stamford Bridge.
The havoc of Chelsea’s victory at Tottenham on Monday was perhaps predictable given how tumultuous the past year has been for both clubs: chaos plus chaos equals more chaos. As Mauricio Pochettino and Ange Postecoglou shook hands at the end of the game it seemed scarcely credible that it was less than 15 months since a 2-2 draw between Chelsea and Spurs had ended in Tuchel and Antonio Conte engaging in a handshake tug-of-war, an incident that felt like it could be the start of a petty and highly entertaining rivalry.
Back then, Boehly and Clearlake’s spending at Chelsea stood at a meagre £243m. If Sterling spent much of last season in a fug of bewilderment, it is perhaps not surprising. He was signed by Tuchel – at a time when, we were told, no recent Chelsea manager had ever had such sway over recruitment – and presumably sold a vision of the club, his role in it clearly defined. This was the environment in which he had chosen to spend his peak. Then a month into the season, Tuchel was sacked for reasons that have still never been adequately explained.
Whatever Sterling had been promised, it presumably didn’t entail operating as a wing-back as increasing numbers of young wide forwards queued up in the corridors at Cobham. Last season, his pass completion in the Premier League fell below 80% for the first time in his career and he recorded his worst success rate for take-ons. Perhaps that’s understandable: it would have been a miracle had he managed to learn the name of every arrival at Chelsea last season, let alone been able to remember where they might position themselves.
That is a symptom of Chelsea’s problems as much as a cause. Players thrive in systems that suit them, when other players move to minimise their vulnerabilities and to maximise their abilities, when they feel comfortable and secure in their surroundings. It’s only natural if Sterling felt unsettled amid the ructions of last season, the dip in both passing and dribbling stats explicable by a lack of movement when he was in possession forcing him into riskier actions.
Other things went wrong. Sterling’s house was burgled during the World Cup, his concerns for the wellbeing of his family causing him to fly home from Qatar, missing the last-16 win over Senegal. Although he was used as a late substitute in the quarter-final defeat by France, Sterling has not been picked for an England squad since.
He suffered a hamstring problem against City in January and was unable to recover full fitness before the end of the season. There was an obvious fear that, if his explosive acceleration had gone, he might go the way of Michael Owen or Fernando Torres, in effect finished as elite players in their late 2os. At the same time, he was being bounced from position to position amid an ever-changing cast of teammates.
Chelsea were disappointing so Sterling was disappointing; Sterling was disappointing so Chelsea were disappointing. The unease of the one fed off the unease of the other and Sterling, more than most, is a player who needs to be confident. The difference between good Sterling – the instinctive player who registered 56 goals plus numerous assists in the league for City between 2019-20 and 2021-22, who was England’s best player at Euro 2020 – and bad Sterling – the hesitant figure of last season – is vast.
Then, after the difficulties of last season, Sterling has suddenly found himself as one of Chelsea’s elder statesmen, at 28 the third oldest player in the squad after Thiago Silva and the backup goalkeeper Marcus Bettinelli. A player who, on the field at least, has often seemed slightly diffident or peripheral suddenly has to be a leader.
His form is much improved this season. He tweaked his diet, at one point going vegan, to try to regain lost sharpness and he trained with a local judo club during the summer, videos posted on social media showing him sprinting up hills. Attempted take-ons have soared back to the level of his Liverpool days, before his reprogramming under Guardiola. He started the first six league games of the season on the right (three in front of a back three and three in front of a back four) and has shifted to the left after Cole Palmer came into the team.
The home win against Luton in which he scored twice probably represented his best performance for a couple of years. While nobody has excelled for the club this season, Sterling stands alongside Palmer and probably Conor Gallagher as one of the three most consistent performers.
But, despite the injury to James Maddison, he was omitted from the England squad again on Thursday and the sense is that, given the wealth of options in his position, he finds himself very much on the outside. For both Sterling and Chelsea, after the chaos of the past year, it is a long way back.
