Raheem Sterling’s Chelsea future in doubt while pundits criticise his statement

Raheem Sterling’s Chelsea future is in doubt after new boss Enzo Maresca said he plans to clear up the former England winger’s situation in the coming days.

Sterling was left out of the Blues squad for Sunday’s 2-0 defeat by Manchester City and his representatives released a statement questioning the decision – a move which did not go down well with some former players.

“The only thing I can say it has been a technical decision,” said Maresca afterwards. “In the next days we will see it and clarify the situation.

“All the players in this moment, they are Chelsea players. If they are going be Chelsea players, we are going to try and use them.

“I want Raheem Sterling, but I want all the players we have and there is no space for all of them. So for some of them, they have to leave.”

Sterling joined Chelsea from City in 2022 and has made 81 appearances, scoring 19 goals.

But the 29-year-old could be the next victim of Chelsea’s oversized squad which currently consists of 42 players.

However, the statement from Sterling’s camp, released just before kick-off and calling for “further clarity” on his future, was met with criticism.

Sky Sports pundit and ex-City defender Micah Richards said: “We’ve all been left out, haven’t we?

“We’ve all wanted to put statements out. Raheem and his team know exactly what they’re doing. They’re trying to make noise.

“The thing is with Chelsea, there is a lot of noise around the club already. Everyone is talking about the players, everyone is talking the ownership, everyone’s talking about ‘can we even guess Chelsea’s starting XI’?

“Putting that statement out before the game is not good enough. That is not going to help your teammates and it’s not going to help his case for getting back in the team.”

Former Liverpool and England midfielder Jamie Redknapp added: “He hasn’t been great since he’s been at Chelsea and come into games, he hasn’t been good enough.

“So if the manager doesn’t want to play you, you just get on with it. You don’t get your representatives to do that, especially on the day of a game. I think that’s absolute rubbish.”

Maresca also defended his decision to make Enzo Fernandez captain after the racism storm caused by a video the Argentinian posted on social media after the Copa America.

“The reason why is because I can see his teammates recognise him, like a reference, like a captain, and he was already captain in the pre-season when we changed Reece (James) during a game,” said the Italian.

“All of us, we make mistakes. It’s important to recognise Enzo did a mistake, recognised the mistake, and it’s finished. At the end it’s nothing important.”

Speaking on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football ahead of Leicester’s game against Tottenham, pundit Gary Neville also criticised Sterling’s decision, but accepted it could have been a response to other issues “behind the scenes”.

Former England and Manchester United defender Neville said: “I can never agree with a player putting a statement out an hour-and-a-half before kick-off because of the fact he has got colleagues and team-mates, and I think you respect them.

“Forget the club, forget the manager – it happened once with Wayne Rooney at United – you are our team-mate so don’t distract from what we are doing. So I think Raheem probably needs to go and have a chat and say that was poor timing.

“For Raheem, who I love to bits, I worked with him for a long time (with England), he is experienced and if he is looking at things behind the scenes, he must be seeing things he doesn’t like and feels like he needs to punch back.

“He might be punching back on behalf of himself, but he may be punching back on behalf of (Conor) Gallagher, (Trevoh) Chalobah, who is with the development squad.

“He might be thinking ‘I have got to alert people to what’s going on here’, because it is unusual to put a statement out.”