My concern with signing Sterling would be that we'd end up coaching the directness out of his game and he'd become another 'side to side' player. He's a fantastic player with great energy and intent, but that will be of little use if we're rolling the ball out to him from midfield and expecting him to come up with a piece of magic every time against a solid bank of 6, even 8 men behind the ball. He'll be completely lost in that set up, especially (and this has been a problem in our team for a while now) if on the other wing we've got the likes of Silva/Nasri, who for all their qualities should never be stuck out wide, or Navas who has the pace but rarely takes on and beats the full back, and his end product leaves something to be desired. Bad decisions have been made over the past few years and often it is to the detriment of some fantastic players. Asking Kompany to play a high line, silva out wide, dzeko with his back to goal constantly, not sorting out the left side of defence/midfield which inevitably leads the left sided centre back (Lescott, Mangala) high and dry. Even Bony, who i do think is a great striker, is only going to struggle unless we start to play more direct balls into the box instead of pissing about passing the ball wide,edge of the box, back to the centre and repeat. Every style of play works with the right players, unfortunately we still seem to be in the kid in a sweet shop stage, buying the flavour of the month and as garry cook famously alluded to, players who's names 'roll off the tongue in bejing' seemingly without giving much consideration to how they would fit tactically. Bottom line is that if we are serious about going in for the likes of sterling, barkley ect, then we must have a clear plan as to how we are going to use them as not to risk ruining their careers, and stunt the development of the team as a whole.
