Arsenal, Chelsea and the Raheem Sterling situation

In the 93rd minute, with Arsenal 9-3 up on aggregate against PSV and the announcer poised to sound Raheem Sterling’s name as the man of the match, the winger sprinted across the pitch and flew into a tackle deep inside his own half.

He appeared to win the ball and, as he raced away with the ball to the applause of the Emirates, it looked like a fitting ending to what was comfortably his best display in an Arsenal shirt.

Instead, the referee delivered his third booking of the competition, ruling him out of the first leg against Real Madrid in the Champions League quarter-final on April 8. To add to the sense that he cannot catch a break, he is ineligible to face his parent club Chelsea on Sunday in the final game before the international break.

It is a microcosm of what has been a frustrating, stop-start season at Arsenal. The Athletic has spoken to sources at Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and those close to Sterling, all of whom have been kept anonymous to protect relationships, to understand more about his situation.

During his time as a coach at Manchester City, Mikel Arteta’s training sessions played an influential role in Sterling’s evolution from a flair dribbler into a back-post assassin.

The forward delivered 20 goal contributions in his final season at Liverpool. But at City, he went stratospheric, recording totals of 36, 39 and 35 between 2017-18 and 2019-20.

It was in the second half of the latter season that some felt Sterling’s decisiveness in the final third had begun to drop. Guardiola still trusted him to carry out his instructions, but in March 2021 he and Guardiola had a disagreement which saw him left out of the team to face Southampton and then left out of the squad completely three days later against Fulham.

As a sign of how Guardiola still trusted him, he was still chosen to start the 2021 Champions League final against Chelsea despite struggling for form at the tail end of that season.

He stayed for another season after that, but City’s offer of a new contract came with the caveat of a reduced role so he chose to move to Chelsea in the summer of 2022.

Although he had not posted the same numbers in his first two years at Stamford Bridge — 13 goal involvements in 2022-23 and 18 in 2023-24 — Sterling was still a regular under Mauricio Pochettino last season.

He was struggling for consistency but he was still showing flashes of the jinking bursts that made him one of the best English attackers of his generation. Chelsea were also a turbulent club within which many players appeared lost.

It is against that backdrop that Arteta believed, like a couple who reunite years after going their separate ways, in the romantic potential of reigniting that spark.

Sterling joined on the basis that Arsenal would provide the stability he has missed at Chelsea, and he arrived in the capacity of an experienced player who could provide an alternative to Gabriel Martinelli and Bukayo Saka. He was a winner who would add to the dressing room and would ease the burden on Arteta’s two first-choice wingers.

That role has become more diluted as the season has progressed, but it was clear after the first three months that this was not going to be a rekindling story.

Sterling was afforded just five starts before the turn of the year, and three of those came in the Carabao Cup against Bolton Wanderers, Preston North End and Crystal Palace. Seven months into the move, he has only once been given back-to-back starts, and in the second of those games he was sacrificed after 37 minutes due to William Saliba’s sending off at Bournemouth.

He has started just 10 games this season, playing only 307 minutes in the league. But when he has appeared, he has looked rusty.

Few envisaged him playing such a little part at Arsenal this season, but how much has Sterling simply dropped off, and how much has Arteta’s failure to give him an early run of games contributed to the lack of sharpness?

Sterling represented a low-risk option for Arsenal at the time. There was no transfer fee, no loan fee and, despite being the highest earner at Chelsea, Arsenal only had to pay a minority share of his wages.

Chelsea’s willingness to lend him to a London rival and the way head coach Enzo Maresca ruthlessly discarded him after a full pre-season should perhaps have raised some red flags but Arteta personally pushed for the signing in the final days of the summer window.

“He wants to prove a point — and when someone’s got that in his belly, you sense it straight away,” the Spaniard said once the deal was announced on August 30.

Let’s get to work 💪 pic.twitter.com/jysRcjMK29

— Arsenal (@Arsenal) August 31, 2024

Not having a financial investment in Sterling is perhaps why Arteta was not motivated to prioritise giving him enough match time to get up to speed. It could have been discarded as a worthwhile punt that just did not work out, but the scrutiny on the transfer increased when Kai Havertz sustained a season-ending hamstring tear in February.

Arsenal needed another forward option but there was no possibility of securing a Premier League loan as they had used up their two domestic slots with Sterling and Bournemouth goalkeeper Neto, who also joined in the summer.

There were no discussions about ending Sterling’s loan early, and no clause to allow an early termination anyway. Recalling Sterling was an option for a Chelsea squad short on wide options after Mykhailo Mudryk was suspended since December after testing positive for the banned substance meldonium. Instead, they preferred to promote academy youngster Tyrique George. The 19-year-old is now getting regular minutes.

Chelsea are planning to find a permanent solution for Sterling in the summer — they do not believe it would be good for him to be loaned out regularly. There is no plan for Chelsea to pay off his contract, but they do accept his high salary is prohibitive to any move. There is hope of working with his camp to find a new club — a move to a league like Saudi Arabia’s is not the only option and finding a team in Europe could be a possibility.

While Chelsea had to loan him to Arsenal at the last minute in the summer, they would hope to move him on sooner this coming window.

Meanwhile, Arsenal’s decision to not add a player in January meant there was pressure on Sterling to step up as a regular starter after months of inactivity. The visit to Leicester City on February 15 was the first game without any of their four first-choice forwards — in addition to Saka and Havertz being out, Gabriel Jesus suffered an ACL injury in January and Martinelli a hamstring injury in February.

This gave Sterling his first real chance to make an impact, but he endured a tough afternoon on the left wing against James Justin in the 2-0 victory. Sterling also looked like he was second-guessing his decision-making at times and when isolated against Justin, he hesitated to take him on.

In January, Tottenham Hotspur full-back Djed Spence came out on top in their individual duel in the north London derby. It looked like he had lost trust in his legs to create a yard of space.

It should not be forgotten that Sterling broke into the Liverpool team at a younger age than even Ethan Nwaneri. This is a player who has played at the top level for club (Liverpool, City, Chelsea and Arsenal) and England for 13 years. If time is catching up on him or he has lost a yard of pace after so many miles on the clock by the age of 30, he is not the first and will not be the last.

Arteta dropped Sterling after that Leicester performance, opting for Mikel Merino (who had come on to score twice at the King Power Stadium) at centre-forward so that Leandro Trossard and 17-year-old Nwaneri could play on the wings instead.

Sterling struggled against Leicester last month (Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)

Last weekend, Sterling’s position in the hierarchy was clear to see. As Arsenal searched for a late winner at Old Trafford against Manchester United, he remained in the stand.

The frequency at which the television cameras cut to Sterling made the football match look like the support act. Glum, forlorn, embarrassed — pitch your tent anywhere in that region of the emotional spectrum and it will not be far off how he must have been feeling.

It is one thing for Arteta to choose other wingers but for the Arsenal manager to use only three of his five subs and prefer left-back Kieran Tierney on the wing ahead of Sterling felt like the ultimate humiliation.

Sterling is not the first player to experience the Arteta cliff edge, though.

Tierney, who is returning to Celtic on a free in the summer, went from being lauded as captain material in early 2022 to being displaced 18 months later following Oleksandr Zinchenko’s arrival. The Ukrainian then lost his place in the second half of last season for a centre-back, Jakub Kiwior. Kiwior himself started six games in a row in February and March during Arsenal’s extended unbeaten run, but has rarely been seen this season as Arteta has preferred to shuffle two or three players’ positions rather than simply play the Polish defender on his weaker right side.

Aaron Ramsdale had the best season of his career in 2022-23 and then had to deal with David Raya being signed as No 1 at the end of that season. Emile Smith Rowe became a key figure between 2020 and 2022 but after groin surgery in September 2022, which kept him out for five months, he was only afforded four starts in his final season before being sold to Fulham last summer.

There tends to be little grey area in a player’s standing in the squad. You are either fancied or you are not, which makes it testing for fringe players to maintain sharpness, but also for the club to maintain their market value.

Sterling’s loan was starting to feel like a stay of execution for Sterling, but his display against PSV was a strong rebuttal to those who have completely written him off.

It was a dead rubber, however, and with Martinelli and Saka due back after the international break, it is difficult to see Sterling’s game time increasing unless Arsenal go deeper in the Champions League and rest players domestically.

Sterling’s game looks much more suited to playing on the right now. It is easier for him to drive inwards from the flank and play one-twos while on the run rather than on the left where he has to either use pace to go on the outside or burst past a player on the inside.

It was how he produced a sharp spin and pass to set up Zinchenko for the opening goal, and how most of his best moments occurred.

(Glyn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images)

Sterling looked like a different player with a bit of confidence flowing through his veins against PSV, and two minutes before half-time he had a great chance to score. He raced towards goal after being played through at the halfway line but his attempted dink was saved.

The Emirates crowd gave a supportive round of applause in a bid to boost his confidence. The same reaction happened late on when another left-footed shot was saved as the fact that he was getting into these positions was enough for them to show their appreciation.

Unfortunately, the flow of adrenaline that led to his costly slide tackle in the final minute was ironically the sort of high-intensity action that has been lacking in Sterling’s previous cameos.

Having been low on confidence and opportunities, his two assists against PSV had the potential to belatedly kickstart his season, but momentum continued to evade him.

Can he build on his performance from Thursday? He will have to bide his time once again as others return to see if he can leave a positive imprint on a season that has passed him by until now.