Since Sergio Aguero’s heyday, two players have delivered 30 goals in a season for Manchester City. As one darted between two defenders to open the scoring for the champions at Stamford Bridge, it may have seemed like Clearlake Capital’s decision to raid the Etihad Stadium in 2022 had paid a rich dividend. As a footballer who has moved between Chelsea and City burst forward to curl in a long-range shot to double that advantage, Todd Boehly got to his feet: but to leave, not to celebrate. To some disbelief, the scorer of the second was the distinctly unprolific Mateo Kovacic. With a certain inevitability, the breakthrough came from Erling Haaland. Meanwhile, the previous man to earn entry to City’s 30 club was nowhere to be seen.
Nowadays Raheem Sterling finds himself in a different kind of group: the Chelsea nonpersons. They are the exiles, the unwanted, the abandoned. Romelu Lukaku was the club-record signing, Kepa Arrizabalaga the most expensive goalkeeper in history, Ben Chilwell the vice-captain, Conor Gallagher the local favourite. Sterling was the flagship signing at the start of a new era. He has not even proved the best wide attacker Chelsea have signed from City in the last two years – that title certainly resides with Cole Palmer – but he was Footballer of the Year in 2019. Five years later, in what should still be his prime, he was not deemed in the top 20 at Chelsea. And if they famously have a lot to choose from, it still represented a slight.
A shock, too, given the response from the Sterling camp. The opening weekend has contained many a snub for men who once seemed England’s future and now cannot even command a spot on the bench at club level: Jadon Sancho and Joe Gomez suffered a similar fate. Unlike Gallagher, Sterling at least made the Chelsea squad list on the back of the matchday programme.
Yet the teamsheet suggested, at best, that he is Chelsea’s sixth-choice winger. Admittedly, that reflects the peculiar dynamics of the squad-building at Stamford Bridge. Some £1.2bn in to the strangest of projects, there is still a vacancy for anyone resembling their Haaland, a potent, out-and-out centre-forward. They have instead imported a deluge of wingers. Pep Guardiola once said he would like a team of 11 midfielders. Chelsea could almost field one of 11 wingers – certainly if Joao Felix, sent off on his debut, unproductive in his loan spell but now a target again, is oddly bought – though now on the proviso none was Sterling.
Surprised as he was at his omission, there was a clue last week when Chelsea paid £54m for Pedro Neto. At his most devastating on the right for Wolves, Neto duly debuted on the left as a substitute for Chelsea, though that is far from the most illogical thing to happen here over the last couple of years. Christopher Nkunku had started in Sterling’s stead, showing a similar ability to spring an offside trap and run in behind a defence, but his propensity to cut inside delayed a shot; it lacked the clinical streak Sterling displayed at his finest, but only intermittently before Guardiola improved him.
On the right, meanwhile, was Palmer, whose first Chelsea season yielded 25 goals and 15 assists: the sort of impact, in short, that Sterling was supposed to make, whereas he has 19 goals in two campaigns. Yet there is a question if Maresca’s tactics will suit Cole Palmer as much as Mauricio Pochettino’s did. The Italian’s wingers are deputed to spend more time hugging the touchline; it scarcely suits Palmer’s strengths, or Nkunku’s. The sense is that Chelsea have not really worked out if Nkunku is a left winger, a No 10 or an ersatz centre-forward.
Even in Sterling’s absence, there was a superficial continuity to Maresca’s selection. They have made 11 signings this summer but all 11 starters were at Stamford Bridge last season, though Nkunku only began two games and Romeo Lavia played just 32 minutes. But it may have been a truer indication of the ethos that six substitutes were new recruits. All four used were debutants.
It has been the annual exercise in impatience. Sterling has been caught up in the craziness. As he is discovering, permanent revolution brings casualties.
Though not necessarily departures. Chelsea may regard Sterling as Thomas Tuchel’s folly and his representatives scarcely acted as peacemakers in a statement asking for “clarity” about his position, but it contained a pertinent point. He has three years left on his lucrative contract. Chelsea find it easy to buy players, harder to sell them. Chelsea need Boehly to take over another club to buy all their deadwood. And – as no one at Stamford Bridge has ever sung – there’s only one Todd Boehly.
Go back a few years and the chorus at City was that Sterling was top of the league. He isn’t now. His subsequent decline has been a precipitous affair. City have recalibrated around Haaland, won a treble without him. Signing Sterling was a bad move for Chelsea, but a still worse one for him.