Raheem Sterling - 2016/17 performances

[capiloton]

don't blame Sterling if he's looks average last night.
blame it on Pep. he's trying to be clever and change the game plan again.
at west ham, he playing freely upfront, interchange position with Sane at will.
remember that run leads to penalty, through pass from KDB?
last night, he was never in that position.

last night he's playing too deep and too wide. same as sane.
he waste his time and energy more on covering for dinho, playing near his own penalty box.
and every time he runs forward, swansea defender had their time and already regroup.

i hate to see sterling and sane going down so deep playing near our own penalty box,
busy helping those aging fullback.
let those 3 speedsters playing freely upfront.
let them harass opponents defender, makes run, and waiting for through pass on the half line.

at one time, you can see gabby alone upfront,
waving his team mate to press swansea defender together.
sane and sterling should stay forward.

 

[Dax777]

I like him.

 

[bobom]

don't blame Sterling if he's looks average last night.
blame it on Pep. he's trying to be clever and change the game plan again.
at west ham, he playing freely upfront, interchange position with Sane at will.
remember that run leads to penalty, through pass from KDB?
last night, he was never in that position.

last night he's playing too deep and too wide. same as sane.
he waste his time and energy more on covering for dinho, playing near his own penalty box.
and every time he runs forward, swansea defender had their time and already regroup.

i hate to see sterling and sane going down so deep playing near our own penalty box,
busy helping those aging fullback.
let those 3 speedsters playing freely upfront.
let them harass opponents defender, makes run, and waiting for through pass on the half line.

at one time, you can see gabby alone upfront,
waving his team mate to press swansea defender together.
sane and sterling should stay forward.

I think more posts should be written in verse.
Although mine is a little more terse.

 

[City_Sean]

His head dropped after the ridiculous booking, but he could have had a couple of assists in that first half. He's improved hugely this season.

 

[Danny_Johnson4]

Sterling needs to spend the week with Zabaleta and Clichy, each one tacking him hard from all imaginable angles. He needs to learn to go down on impact and keep his head face down in the turf, body motionless. His natural enthusiasm is forcing him to look up immediately, even when he isn't claiming a penalty - see today's example- but that's making it easier for the officials.

It's a terrible thing to advocate, but given how dreadful the refereeing has become, I no longer see the point in being sporting.

Ok so I think this is a bit tongue in cheek, as I would never seriously consider having our lads batter one of our best players this year for a whole week in training just to practise how well he gets hurt

Besides, we would have to teach Clichy how to tackle hard, prior to asking him to do it from any kind of angle. The guy would get out battled by a wriggling fish

 

[teddykgb]

He's improved a lot this season. He works so hard and tries his best. I've got a lot of time for him. A fellow got beat up for this in the post match but I do worry about his long term future with us. In my heart of hearts I can see that his combination of touch and control isn't at the level required. I really hope he can improve it but it lets him down an awful lot. To his credit, he gets into great positions with enough frequency that he can almost overcome it on a raw chance basis, so the stats end up quite good. He's just such an enigma of a player still, very tricky but the best outcome of most of his work is going to be a penalty as he doesn't seem completely able to touch, control, and see the next move with enough regularity to do the things a Sane or even a Jesus have done for us in their short time. But the refs have clearly decided that he goes down easily and that he plays for the penalty and they're extra harsh on him. I think control is the important thing he needs to learn right now. The ball is not in his feet the way it is with the very best, and so he's always moving at full stretch and ending up in full speed collisions with other players. It's all just a bit too helter skelter and on the edge of out of control and it gives the incompetent refs enough to wave off things that should be penalties.

 

[somethingelse]

Sterling had to react to the studs of the keeper coming towards him
Anyone can see they were extremely adjacent to his knee,i wonder how Dean would react to studs flying towards his knee,he would probably try and get his knee out of the way,Sterling had played the ball across the goal so why would he do that if it was part of the dive
Also if a goal or a penalty had occurred everyone would be raving about Kolarovs pass, still the same pass

 

[Mike N]

I think he's improved a lot this year and has contributed much more than last season. His touch is still not the best and his decision making has to improve. He got into a number of positions on Sunday and wastefully hit the defenders.

 

[FromPollockToSilva]

His movement is routinely excellent, he makes fantastic runs all the time. He needs to make more of the great positions he gets himself into, but he's hardly alone on that front.

 

[Callum Ramsey]

He's improved a lot this season. He works so hard and tries his best. I've got a lot of time for him. A fellow got beat up for this in the post match but I do worry about his long term future with us. In my heart of hearts I can see that his combination of touch and control isn't at the level required. I really hope he can improve it but it lets him down an awful lot. To his credit, he gets into great positions with enough frequency that he can almost overcome it on a raw chance basis, so the stats end up quite good. He's just such an enigma of a player still, very tricky but the best outcome of most of his work is going to be a penalty as he doesn't seem completely able to touch, control, and see the next move with enough regularity to do the things a Sane or even a Jesus have done for us in their short time. But the refs have clearly decided that he goes down easily and that he plays for the penalty and they're extra harsh on him. I think control is the important thing he needs to learn right now. The ball is not in his feet the way it is with the very best, and so he's always moving at full stretch and ending up in full speed collisions with other players. It's all just a bit too helter skelter and on the edge of out of control and it gives the incompetent refs enough to wave off things that should be penalties.

I'm almost certain he'll be at the club for a very long time. Young, English, has huge market potential and last but most importantly, the current and one of the best managers of our generation seems to have full trust and confidence in his ability. A player who has clocked the 2nd most minutes of anyone in the team, leads in assists and is 2nd only to aguero in goals scored so far should be the least of your worries going forward. With the amount of chances he gets and creates for the team, you could argue he should have more than the 7 goals and 14 assists to his name but that's the kind of standard he's been performing at this season and pep has even acknowledged that with this quote, “Raz is playing in a row every three days at a high level, has scored a lot of goals, made assists, and is dangerous in the box". As for whether his touch and control is at the required level, I would argue most of his best performances since joining the club has in fact been in the champions league against some of the best sides in europe(i.e sevilla,barcelona) where he's not looked out of place and displayed a good combination of both touch and control amongst the very best . He's also been doing all you claim sane and jesus have done in their short time for most of the season and was a key reason for the great start the team had, so I'm not exactly sure where that criticism is coming from.

All three of these young players have qualities that compliments each others games. Sane seems the better of them in carrying the ball at speed and beating players in terms of dribbling although the other two are far from lacking in that area. Sterling the most intelligent runner off the ball in the timing of his runs and positioning. While jesus from the little I've seen seems the more intelligent user of the ball and more rounded while scarily being the youngest. What's important though is that they are all technically very capable and tactically aware players and have shown a mentality and workrate second to none so any fears about any of their long-term futures should be put at ease.