Raheem Sterling issued a succinct first comment after his Chelsea contract was mutually terminated, but the real questions concern his next destination. The 31-year-old, a four-time Premier League champion who featured in last season\u2019s Champions League semi-finals, returns to the market after a six-month exile at Chelsea.<\/p>\n
One route has already been closed. Napoli sporting director Giovanni Manna distanced his club from any approach before facing Chelsea in midweek. \u201cRaheem is very good, but he hasn\u2019t been playing for a long time,\u201d Manna told Sky Italia. \u201cWe spoke with him during the summer but I see it as difficult right now, he has significant financial expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sterling had been earning around \u00a3325,000 per week at Chelsea and voluntarily ended a deal that still had 18 months remaining. Napoli say those terms exceed their budget, but several mid-table or struggling Premier League clubs could meet financial demands that the reigning Italian champions cannot.<\/p>\n
With Chelsea and Arsenal unavailable and an unsuccessful loan at Arsenal last season ruling that option out, the winger\u2019s list has been narrowed to Tottenham Hotspur, Crystal Palace, Fulham, West Ham United and Brentford. West Ham have already been rejected by Sterling, who was thought to be prioritising a move to Fulham. Fulham meanwhile appear set to complete a \u00a327 million signing of Manchester City winger Oscar Bobb, who would cover a substitute role after Adama Traor\u00e9\u2019s move to West Ham.<\/p>\n
Crystal Palace recently broke their record to sign Brennan Johnson and are reportedly poised to top that outlay again with a \u00a350 million package agreed in principle for Wolverhampton Wanderers\u2019 J\u00f8rgen Strand Larsen, per BBC Sport.<\/p>\n
That leaves Tottenham and Brentford. Brentford have shown a willingness to recruit experienced players and have benefited from Jordan Henderson\u2019s leadership, but the club\u2019s top earner takes home less than a quarter of Sterling\u2019s reported Chelsea wage.<\/p>\n
Across Liverpool, Man City, Chelsea and Arsenal he has 396 games, 123 goals, 65 assists, four titles and 26 penalties won, the latter noted as most in Premier League history. Clubs now weigh whether his experience and record justify the financial outlay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sterling leaves Chelsea and weighs offers from Tottenham, Palace, Fulham, West Ham and Brentford. vs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6323,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172,1163],"tags":[983,1162,1305],"class_list":["post-6324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","category-transfers","tag-agents","tag-analytics","tag-bench-selection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}