In defence of Fabian Delph and Raheem Sterling's transfers to Manchester City

Raheem Sterling made a £49m switch from Liverpool to Manchester City

Imagine the following two scenarios:

1. You are a consistent performer at a low profile company which has been struggling to even break-even over the past few years. The company is poised to lose one of its top performers and it looks like they are doomed for failure. Then one of the biggest firms around offers you a job with a significantly higher package with the downside being less recognition. Will you be able to turn that offer down?
2. You are a precocious talent and have been performing very well at a mid-level firm, but you know that to advance further in your career you have to join a bigger firm. There already has been a massive breakdown of trust between you and your manager and there has been sometimes unwarranted criticism of you at the firm. So when the bigger firm comes along with an offer, will you refuse?

Maybe I hang in the wrong circles but most of the people I know won’t be able to say no to either of these situations and I doubt people will stay at their current company just because of loyalty. But this is not a career advice article and football fans will know that I am talking about the highly publicised and controversial transfers of Fabian Delph and Raheem Sterling to Manchester City. As the above snippets show, most of us will grab an opportunity which offers us both career advancement and better pay.

So I find the amount of vitriol directed at both Sterling and Delph on social media over the past few days very surprising. Basically, they are being pilloried for making the same decisions we would have made just because they are footballers. For me, it only highlights the fickle nature of football fans as they have started criticizing these players as overhyped (Sterling) and money-grabbers (Delph) when they were praising them only a few days ago.

Why Sterling and Delph’s transfers make perfect sense

This has been transformed into a case of morality and loyalty even though from a purely footballing perspective these transfers make a lot of sense for both Manchester City and the players. Manchester City need homegrown players to fulfil the Premier League quota and in Sterling they have acquired one of the brightest young English talents while Delph will be more than an adequate replacement in the centre of the park for the outgoing Frank Lampard.

Fabian Delph’s U-turn at Aston Villa was a mistake but his transfer was not

Meanwhile, looking at Sterling, you can fault his method of engineering the exit but not his ambition. Though an unfinished article, you can’t question the young forward’s talent. Even in a frustrating season, he was behind only Eden Hazard and David Silva in number of chances created in EPL. He had to leave Liverpool given the acrimonious relationship with Rodgers and he will be happy to play for a side in the Champions League – one that will challenge for the league title instead of battling for fourth on the home front.

In the case of Delph, the biggest mistake he made was committing his future verbally to Aston Villa just a week ago. It was a surprise that he chose to stay at the perennially relegation-threatened club in the first place but in the end he rightly took up a very lucrative offer at the Etihad.

Contrary to the suggestions that he will be nothing more than a glorified bench warmer at City, there is a genuine chance for Delph to establish himself there given the departures of Lampard and James Milner and the lack of consistency from Fernando & Feranandinho.

As with all transfers there is always a chance that Sterling and Delph could fail spectacularly in Manchester and end up being like Scott Sinclair or Jack Rodwell (I am sure many Villa and Liverpool fans will be hoping they do), but you can’t deny that the transfer makes sense for both players as they get to perform on a bigger stage. We will have to wait and see how it all pans out.

But in the meantime, I hope we can stop with the hypocritical tirades against them.