As a fan of Sterling as a player, sad to see the people on a Man City forum lining up to slate him after a single sub-par performance since November. Unfortunately Sterling will always be underrated by most English fans and I believe this is subconsciously related to how the press portrayed him early on in his career. However you would expect better support from his own club's fans.
In terms of his supposed poor finishing, it isn't borne out by the evidence (think about this next time you call him a "poor finisher" and why that might be...):
Since 2017-18 (since xG data available covering nearly 12,000 mins) he has 0.53 non-penalty goals per 90 from a non-penalty xG per 90 of 0.48
Fact is there is a strong correlation between number of goals and big chances missed - this season Salah has the most big chances missed in the league and last season he was joint second. Positioning is far more important than "finishing" (https://statsbomb.com/2017/07/quantifying-finishing-skill/).
If there is one thing that they don't forget to tell you when you pursue any sort of career in finance, is that there are tens of different ways to interpret a stat or a ratio.
Someone has mentioned cricket, lets start from there.
Who has better stats among the two: Jimmy Anderson or Mohammad Asif?
Anderson obviously, yet if you were to ask greatest modern day batsmen, such as; Amla, Peterson, Laxman or AB de Villiers, that who was the most difficult bowler they ever faced in their entire career, each one of them would pick Asif. He was not the sharpest tool in the shed and threw away his career due to spot fixing, yet he didn't take the money from the bookies.
Another example is Mariusz Pudzianowski, won five World's Strongest Man titles—more than any other, yet stats won't tell you the fact that a healthy number of competitors were competing in a newly formed competition and were banned from taking part in WSM competition. Savickas smoked him in Arnold Classic, a competition that favoured those athletes who were stronger in static lifting and still does, and if you were to watch the WSM competitions that Marius won, they were heavily catered for explosive athleticism, something that he excelled in.
The non-penalty expected goals depend upon shots taken per 90 minutes, and here you have contradicted yourself. Someone who lacks technical skills to finish off the chances or lacks composure in front of the goal, won't attempt to score from narrow angles, heck he won't even try to score unless he is dead certain, which is the case with Sterling.
That's why Juventus spent 70 million euros on Vlahovic while Nmecha is playing for Wolfsburg, whose is as good as Vlahovic in terms of npxG, but would never reach the heights that Vlahovic can potentially reach. I would like to be proven wrong though.
If Sterling was at the end of the De Bruyne's pass we would not have achieved 100 points landmark, as it was evident in the Champions League final when he could not even control that long ball from Ederson.
As for the big chances missed, Salah more than make up for it by scoring from ridiculous situations/angels. See his attempt vs Chelsea or his goal against Wolves, where At Nouri, probably one of the best left backs out there, had to be forced off in 89th minute because he was cramped up due to defending against Salah.
To summarise: If Sterling were that good, we would not have been interested in Alvarez, let alone tring to secure the services of Haaland to finish off chance after chance that we create, we would have just simply promoted Delap.
P.S. Tifo Football rates him as the best footballer outside of the top five leagues.