The reason for my fury was the timing of this particular story. Whoever has let it be known that Sterling is in no rush to commit his future to Liverpool has made a massive mistake. No thought has been given to the big picture.
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If anyone around me had put out a story like that about me during my career, never mind the day before a game, our relationship would have been over. My agent, certainly, wouldn’t have done anything like that and I would never have allowed that, even if he had wanted to.
April:
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For a 20-year-old and his agent to be taking on Liverpool FC in the public domain is a disgrace
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the agenda that is being driven from Sterling’s camp is beyond a joke.
May:
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I can't get out of my head a young kid and his agent trying to take the club on
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He doesn't need to move club - he needs to change his agent, that's what he needs to change.
As we all know, Liverpool Football Club is special. Different. Classy. Unique. Special. Unique. Classy. Unique. Iconic. Unique. Special. Unique. Clubby. Clubbish. Clubesque. Special. Unique. Increasingly irrelevant. Over the hill. Past-it. Yesterday’s news. Special. Unique. Iconic. Unique. Special. Special. Special. Unique. Liverpool Football Club are special. And unique. And special. And classy. They’re special and specially unique and uniquely specially and specially special and uniquely classy and they have a different way of doing things, you wouldn’t understand, you just wouldn’t, because you’re not special, or classy, or unique, you’re not Liverpool Football Club, and you wouldn’t understand, so don’t even bother, just accept it, they’re the best football team in the tra-la-la-la land.
Liverpool Football Club’s specialness and uniqueness and classiness naturally places them in a position to pat lesser clubs on the head and let them know of their place in the food chain. Clubs, say, like Southampton, who were browbeaten into selling Adam Lallana and Dejan Lovren to mighty Liverpool last summer. “They have a choice as a club,” Liverpool’s head guru, Brendan Rodgers, roared last August. “They don’t have to sell. You have a choice. Maybe Southampton’s objectives have changed. They were looking to be a [Big Cup] club, I believe. They obviously wanted to change. There might be one or two others who leave. It’s just the way it works.” It’s. Just. The. Way. It. Works.
Words to live by. Poetry in motion that comes to mind now that Raheem Sterling is busy letting Liverpool know that the way it works is that he would like to leave in the summer, maybe join a bigger club, play for a team who actually have a chance of winning something in the near future, that there’s only so many times he can hear about the Miraculous Miracle of Istanbul before he’s forced to go all Van Gogh on his ears.
Treason! Naturally Sterling’s desire to play for a good team has been met with fury and The Fiver assumes he has spent the day locked in Melwood’s Re-education Chamber, a crack team of Phil Thompson, John Bishop and John Aldridge taking it in turns to hammer home the uniqueness and specialness and classiness of Liverpool Football Club, making sure Sterling knows that he will forever walk alone if he joins Manchester City, a terrifying prospect indeed. It’s just the way it works.