Report: Manchester City's Raheem Sterling Can Be Considered A Chelsea Player
Report: Manchester City's Raheem Sterling Can Be Considered A Chelsea Player - Sports Illustrated Manchester City News, Analysis and More Skip to main content
Sterling can deliver as Chelsea’s top earner but his wages complicate other deals
Raheem Sterling is to become the first signing of the Todd Boehly-Clearlake Capital era and they have chosen their opening transfer statement wisely: a highly accomplished, proven Premier League performer in the middle of his prime years who addresses a key need in Thomas Tuchel’s squad. An agreed fee of £47.5 million also suggests a triumph of negotiation for Boehly, who is still very much feeling his way in the European football transfer market as Chelsea’s interim sporting director. Sterling entering the final year of his contract at Manchester City provided both him and any suitor with valuable leverage, but Chelsea’s makeshift recruitment structure still moved with impressive assurance and speed to convince the player and find a financial framework that makes sense. But that is not the sum total of Chelsea’s financial commitment in this deal. While most media coverage and fan conversation around transfers tends to focus on the fees being exchanged between clubs, that is not how clubs themselves calculate the cost of recruitment. Player wages are actually the more significant part of the equation because, unlike transfer fees, they are not amortised in the accounts, and if a transfer goes wrong, a bad salary is the hardest thing to shift. Chelsea were reminded of that almost on an annual basis in the Roman Abramovich era and Romelu Lukaku’s return to Inter this summer provides a good recent case study. The fact that the Serie A giants could not offer anything close to a satisfactory transfer fee wasn’t ultimately much of an obstacle to a deal that was in the sporting interests of all parties. The problem was Lukaku’s status as top earner at Stamford Bridge on around £340,000 a week; in the end, he had to voluntarily take a 35 per cent pay cut for the coming season to make a loan back to San Siro feasible. Nor did the lack of resale value hugely affect Boehly and Clearlake’s hopes of investing to significantly strengthen Tuchel’s squad in this window. Not being able to free Chelsea’s wage bill of Lukaku’s gargantuan salary, however, would have limited their recruitment power in much the same way that Mesut Ozil and, later, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, hampered Arsenal in the market. Sterling, who will join Chelsea’s pre-season tour in Los Angeles on Wednesday before his signing is confirmed, has now effectively filled Lukaku’s salary spot. While it is impossible to be exact about the breakdown of a footballer’s wage without seeing their contract, several individuals with knowledge of the agreement have told The Athletic that the England international will be paid north of £300,000 a week when bonuses and performance incentives are factored in, in addition to a big signing-on fee. He is the new top earner at Stamford Bridge, with N’Golo Kante — who is entering the final year of a deal worth £290,000 a week — second in Lukaku’s absence. There is every reason to think Sterling will be productive for the bulk of this contract, which commits him to Chelsea until the age of 32 with an option for a further year. He has been a valuable contributor to Premier League title-contending teams almost without interruption since he broke through as a dynamic teenager, first at Liverpool and then at City. Pep Guardiola elevated his game to new heights and, while his non-penalty goal returns have dipped with his minutes across all competitions in the last two seasons, he still represents a clear scoring upgrade on Tuchel’s current options: Sterling is a reliable source of goals Season Minutes played Non-penalty goals 2017-18 3562 22 2018-19 4121 25 2019-20 4012 31 2020-21 3702 14 2021-22 3126 15 It’s hard in any case to envision a repeat of the Lukaku mess. This is a player that Tuchel has explicitly targeted as a good fit for his system and style of play, rather than a recruitment compromise primarily born out of availability on the transfer market.
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