Football’s Silly Season Commences: How Many Sterlings For Sterling!?!

With about a month or so left until the beginning of the 2015/16 football league season, transfers (and the rumours) are flying around wildly. Manchester United are standing firm on David de Gea, Stoke City have picked up Glen Johnson – but all the talk right now is of the Raheem Sterling deal between Liverpool and Manchester City, set to be £49 million.

Since this has gone on, a lot of talk has been going on within the Football world as to Sterling’s value. So far, he’s made 92 Premier League appearances scoring 18 goals. For a young man playing a forward, it’s certainly not bad, but the statistics compared to the asking price is where the debates are happening: for around about 0.2 goals per game, is he worth £49 million? Looking at the numbers, it certainly looks like he shouldn’t.

But it could be argued that, with Raheem only being 20 years old, there’s many years ahead of him to just become even better. Plus, does playing for two of England’s top teams (Liverpool and now Man City) allow him to learn from those who are at the top of their games to find his peak performance much quicker? It could be a transfer that may not show initial result but, over time, pay off rather handsomely.

We here at PunkFootball like to look at things slightly differently, though, as £49 million is a very significant amount of money. So what could be bought with that amount?

You could pay £49 million for Sterling to go to Man City. Or watch Steven Gerrard over and over and over…

– About 500,000,000 pencils. At least you’d have a massive reserve of writing equipment to sign off any other transfers Manchester City want to make.

– Nearly 2,000,000 LA Galaxy match tickets. Go to America and watch another former Liverpool player, Steven Gerrard, with his new football team. And take the thousands of friends you have too as there’s no way you’ll get through all that money for tickets to those games.

– Bahama Islands Darby Island and Lighthouse Cay, with money left over to pay the taxes too. We’re forward planning with this. After all, if you’re going to rule land, you’re going to still need the extra cash for other luxuries too, right?

– More than 16 million Big Macs. Just don’t have them all for yourself though. Share it with the 1/4 of the UK’s population that you’re clearly friends with.

– Convert it to 27,584,943,419.49 Zimbabwean Dollars. That’s twenty-seven billion, five hundred and eighty-four million, nine hundred and forty-three thousand, four hundred and 19 Zimbabwean dollars and 49 cents. Because it sounds bigger and more impressive than £49 million. However, this currency is coming to an end so it’s not worth it really.

That’s just a few things we’ve managed to find. Are they a better use of that money though? It’s a topic that will keep football fans discussing for weeks on end and even in to – and through – this upcoming season. Whatever happens though, it will be an interesting developing story to follow.

Ashley Redman
Wishes he could have £49, let alone £49 million