For me personally, I think it is in our best interest to sell Sterling if we receive a big offer for him, especially as it seems he doesn't want to stay. While obviously a very good player we are not talking about someone on the level of, say, Suarez. He has only got 6 goals and that is our biggest problem this season, nobody has more than that.
The truth is Sterling is the only player we have that can command a large enough fee where we can rectify the mistake of not finding a suitable replacement for Suarez and a replacement for Gerrard.
We have a lot of potential in the squad but we really need a couple of world class signing to get us back on track.
Completely disagree with this.
How can it be in our best interest to sell one of the best players in our squad, who in addition is just 20 years old and will only get better? It just can't.
There's only one way it could be in our best interest: We get a large fee, and use that money to buy (a) BETTER player(s). But think about it for a sec: Who on earth that is better than Sterling would we possibly sign, considering we'd be selling one of our best players? What world class player would want to sign for a club that is not good enough to challenge the teams that aren't good enough to win the title? No one.
Rectify the mistake of not finding a suitable replacement for Suarez and a replacement for Gerrard? We got ~£75m for Suarez last summer, we tried to replace him with Sanchez but he wasn't interested/Liverpool were negotiating forever over pennies while Arsenal came along and did the deal in no time. We got stuck with Balotelli, a guy who will never reach 30% of his potential.
The message alone given out by selling Sterling will be enough to damage us as a club. It's an admission of failure from the club. It's a confession that our strategy will never amount to anything. If we're supposed to grow talents, but sell our biggest talent at the age of 20, we're giving up.
He has 7 goals iirc, in a team that has been **** almost the entire season. And even the periods where we've been good, we haven't scored many goals. And did I mention he's just 20 years old? He can easily be a player who scores 15 goals a season, even more if he's consistent in a good team.
Telling ourselves it's in our "best interest" to sell Sterling is just fooling ourselves. That's trying to convince ourselves that it's not such a big deal if he leaves, because we're anticipating he's leaving. It IS a big deal if he leaves, for the reasons mentioned. If we wanna take a step FORWARD and not take a step backward at the same time, we need to keep players like Sterling, Coutinho and Can. Because if Sterling leaves, we're gonna sit here next year reading posts like "it's not such a big deal if Coutinho leaves". It's time to pull the finger out of our *****, smell it, and realize it stinks like ****.
