Sterling Deal Does Not Flatter Premier League

A fee of £49m for a player with fewer than 20 league goals says much about the state of English football.

 Raheem Sterling is the most expensive Englishman of all time
That Raheem Sterling's £49m transfer from Liverpool to Manchester City has been the story of a short summer transfer window says a great deal about the state of the Premier League and those that follow it, not all of it flattering.

There is one clear winner from the deal: Sterling himself. Feeling unfulfilled, under-appreciated and underpaid at Liverpool, he seems to have solved all three with the stroke of a pen.
City should provide the sustained opportunity at the highest level he wants. They are close to Champions League certainties and, with financial fair play restrictions removed, will plainly keep spending to make sure they stay that way.
Sterling is also sure to be welcomed by fans at the Etihad who, to their credit, show no signs of taking for granted the conveyor belt of talent laid on by their Abu Dhabi owners.
A weekly wage nudging £200,000 per week should deal with any concerns over pay, placing him in the top bracket of Premier League earners.
His agent, the much-maligned Aidy Ward, can also feel pleased with his work, though he won't expect thanks for it.
His player wanted a move and he has engineered it, with a huge fee to the selling club. He will consider his job done, and with less pain, and more money, than might have been the case.
Beyond Team Raheem the deal is more ambiguous.
For Liverpool this is a bitter pill sweetened only slightly by the £49m that made it happen.
For the second time in consecutive seasons Brendan Rodgers has lost his best player, this time to a direct opponent.
If Luis Suarez's move to Barcelona felt inevitable once Liverpool failed to reach the Champions League, the loss of a player with much still to prove ought not to have been.
It is another blow to Anfield's self-esteem.
For City it is another signing that can be filed under 'statement of intent', a flexing of the enormous financial muscle that has helped inflate the transfer market since Sheikh Mansour chose east Manchester for his new hobby.
Is it too much? The going rate? A snip? Performances will help answer that question, but it remains a remarkable amount of money for a 20-year-old who has played fewer than 100 Premier League games and scored fewer than 20 goals.
It demonstrates that the premium on young English talent is huge, in part because there is so little of it. His transfer has been a media saga partly because of his singularity.
Sterling is a wonderful talent, a player of huge potential with a gift for beating defenders that sets him apart from most of his generation. But he has only one stellar season on his showreel and has not won a medal.
The English game, and the transfer market, might be in better health if there were more like him.