Football’s most controversial transfer saga turned nasty on Thursday when England star Raheem Sterling’s agent launched an extraordinary attack on Liverpool and the club’s former players.
In an interview in the London Evening Standard, Sterling’s agent Aidy Ward said that his client would not sign a new contract even if Liverpool offered ‘£700, £800 or £900,000 per week’.
Following the publication of those remarks, Liverpool cancelled a planned meeting between Sterling and his advisors and manager Brendan Rodgers and Chief Executive Ian Ayre that was scheduled for Friday.
In comments to the Ward Evening Standard Ward said:
“I don’t care about the PR of the club and the club situation. I don’t care.
“He is definitely not signing. He’s not signing for £700, £800, £900 thousand a week. He is not signing.
“My job is to make sure I do the best with them (my clients). If people say I am bad at my job, or they are badly advised it does not matter.”
Sterling, who was booed as he collected the club’s Young Player of the Year award this week, is rapidly falling out of favour with Liverpool fans, with one apparently kicking his car as he drove away from Liverpool’s training ground yesterday.
While former Liverpool players on both sides of the Atlantic have criticised the striker and Ward, it was comments from Jamie Carragher that seemed to get under Ward’s skin the most.
Craggier told the England star to
“keep your mouth shut” and “get on with playing football”
and Ward fired back saying:
“Carragher is a knob. Everybody knows it. Any of the criticism from current pundits or ex-Liverpool players – none of them things matter to me. It is not relevant.”
Ward is backing Liverpool and FSG into a corner here where they will have to sell Sterling. It was telling that the Liverpool fans booed him when he picked up his Young Player of the Year award early this week, and I am sure he will not get a warm reception from the traveling Liverpool supporters on Sunday at Stoke.
Liverpool cannot keep a player for two years who is being booed by his own fans. It is bad for the player and the team. They will have to sell him.
Ward’s final comment in the Evening Standard interview was the truest, when he said:
“Every Premier League club will make a bid for him.”
All FSG and Liverpool can do is encourage a bidding war between United, City, Chelsea and Arsenal and get the price up as high as possible.
