What The Sterling Transfer Says About The Premier League
By Ryan Wrenn
Sterling, to his credit, will not share these other players’ inglorious fates. He has all the promise and talent to slot right in to City’s first team. It is for that reason that his price becomes so inflated; he fulfills City’s homegrown requirement while also seamlessly entering the starting XI. Not since Milner’s (also inflated) transfer have City been able to secure such a player to in their roster.
For Liverpool, then, the decision to release Sterling becomes easy. Who knows really how much more Sterling will develop, and there’s a significant chance that they’d never see such an offer for him again were they to keep him. They’re trading as high as possible on an asset whose true value is not yet known, though in all likelihood it is far lower than what City is paying.
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That’s important for many reasons, none moreso than the ever-looming shadow of Financial Fair Play. They know, and likely have known since before the transfer window even opened, that Sterling’s sale was inevitable. Prior to this transfer, they had already acquired the services of Danny Ings, Nathaniel Clyne and Roberto Firmino for a total amount approaching Sterling’s transfer fee. On paper – not including salaries of course – they’re essentially breaking even by trading on a promising young starlet for three established and also-talented players.
That’s a vital trade for Liverpool. They’d stand to be at a real disadvantage if Sterling’s sale did not go through. In order to comply with UEFA’s financial standards – essentially that teams cannot operate in the red without significant penalties – Liverpool more or less have to break even with their transfer dealings. Flipping a young player to help retool the squad in several key areas while also staying in compliance with FFP is as much of a no-brainer that can exist in football.
It’s also a transaction that resembles the same gambit Liverpool took after the sale of Luis Suarez last summer. Though widely viewed as a failure akin to Tottenham’s splurge after the sale of Gareth Bale, Liverpool’s ownership has decided to doubledown on the tactic this summer. In truth it might work out better this season; no team could hope to handle the loss of a player like Suarez without such turmoil that Liverpool experienced, a situation not at all helped by the lengthy injury-related absences of Daniel Sturridge. There’s every chance that Rodgers will find an easier time of it this season.
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It’s much more difficult to see the upsides from City’s point of view. Yes, they get a talented young homegrown player, but they acquire him at a premium. What’s more, there’s little likelihood that they’ll offset his purchase with sales of their own players. Sergio Aguero, Joe Hart and David Silva have become the faces of the franchise and thus are nigh untouchable. Many more on City’s squad are simply too old – and/or too well compensated week-to-week – to see any meaningful movement in the transfer market.
That’s just one aspect of the inherent flaw in City’s big-money transfer policy. They’ve have already paid for it on at least one way: they were among the first clubs punished under UEFA’s FFP rules last season.
Unlike Liverpool and many other big clubs in England, City have also failed to nurture a development system that can pump out talent either for the first team’s use or to act as pawns on the transfer market. They’re recent investment in a new academy should begin to address that problem, but it might still be a while yet before they begin to churn out players of Sterling’s caliber.
In the end, it’s much easier to use the Sterling transfer as a lense through which to view the current state of the game than it is to predict the young man’s future. It could be that Liverpool will rue the day they let him go. It could be that City has once again soured a player’s future by artificially bolstering his value and salary. Only time will tell.