Another Busy Week For Raheem Sterling

These days, there is hardly a week which passes when Manchester City player Raheem Sterling is not featuring on the front or back pages of the newspapers.

For whatever reason, we have reached a point where Raheem Sterling is big news. He sells papers. He gets clicks on websites. He gets bigger audiences on TV.

It no longer matters if the coverage is positive or negative. It is the appetite for Raheem related news which is the important thing.

In that way he is probably the only bona fide English superstar in football, and there would appear to be no relenting in sight. That appetite for Raheem seems to be increasing as time passes.

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This week then has been the usual incident packed week for Raheem.

The continuing fall out from the incident with Joe Gomez has occupied much of the tabloid press. This story has been buoyed by Liverpool journalists who would almost have you believe that little Raheem is in fact Anthony Joshua.

Their story paints Sterling as the 5 foot tall aggressor, bullying poor 6 foot 5 inch Joe into a worried and depressed heap.

Then against Chelsea, much of the coverage has focussed upon the tribulations of Raheem, particularly in connection with the increasingly troublesome implementation of VAR.

Raheem scored what was a perfectly good goal in the dying moments of the game. After some dubious delays the goal was eventually chalked out by VAR for what was at best a spurious offside call against Raheem.

Whilst the goal was not pivotal to the result, goal difference could yet be crucial in the title race. After all, we have won the title on goal difference in the past!

After the match, Raheem joked on twitter about the impact of VAR, continually denying him goals. Fans though, expressed less humour about the incident, instead viewing the deliberations of VAR with suspicion.

The weaponisation of VAR against Sterling, feels deliberate, intended to deliver drama for the Premier League, to keep their product interest high.

Even negative headlines though about VAR and Sterling serve to keep Raheem in the headlines.

By Sunday evening a further story was beginning to break about Raheem. This was about the fact he has been nominated for BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Now of course, this is based upon a “leak” of the news to the papers as the nominations are not officially released for another few weeks.

All told, a week for Raheem has seen him bullying Joe Gomez, being robbed of a goal by VAR and now being nominated for the Sports Personality of the Year. Another normal week in the life of Raheem!