Raheem Sterling has been struggling in recent times following an excellent start to life at Chelsea.
The 27-year-old scored three goals in his first five appearances for Chelsea but had to go on a seven matches goal drought. Sterling finally scored during Chelsea’s 2-1 win over Dinamo Zagreb in the Champions League.
Raheem Sterling’s poor run of goal-scoring form is partly due to the new role he was assigned under Graham Potter. Sterling had often been deployed as a right wing-back under Graham Potter, mainly because of the injury to Reece James.
However, Graham Potter has refused to blame Raheem Sterling’s poor form for his playing as a right-wing back. He has insisted that Raheem Sterling is not assigned to defend under his new role.
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Former England and Arsenal striker Ian Wright claims Raheem Sterling is unhappy with his new role and also revealed that opposition teams have targeted the wide areas because of his defensive weakness.
What did Ian Wright say?
The Arsenal Icon said on the Kelly and Wrighty Show: “It’s one of the confusing things what Graham Potter is doing at the moment, I can’t get my head around it.
“When I did the analysis on the game [Chelsea’s defeat to Brighton], the full-back area, Brighton just absolutely tore them to shreds because you’ve got Pulisic and Sterling who are supposedly meant to come and try to help Chalobah and Cucurella.
“It wasn’t happening and I couldn’t understand it.
“There’s no way he [Sterling] can be happy playing that role, especially when you look at what he’s done at City, and the team he was playing in, everything was really concentrated on offense for him.
“It must be really strange and tough for him to go to a new club and have to play in a position like that. I hope they can sort that out soon for him.”
Ian Wright also added that Chelsea is still a work in progress despite one defeat in 10 games.
He added: “The thing is with it, the way they played it was so disorganized.
“I know they’ve lost one in 10 but the way they played the other day, it’s not good form.
“If he doesn’t make that more solid [in midfield] and get something going in there, whether it’s Kovacic or Jorginho, Chelsea have got away with playing up the pitch with proper full-backs, I think it’s going to happen again [a heavy defeat], I think it might be papering over cracks, the games up to this point because if he’s that far off it with getting the wing-backs, Thiago Silva being pulled into areas, Chalobah being pulled, they can’t carry on like that because they will get beaten, they’ll get beaten quite heavily.
“It’s a worry, they’ve got to sort it out quite quickly or it’s not going to be good for them.
“They’ve had a couple of results where it could’ve gone the other way and that’s what happens sometimes. That’s why you need managers to come out, like Ten Hag, who says what’s wrong even if you win, and I think that’s something Graham Potter has to do.
“It felt a little bit weird as well, Graham Potter was going back there, the Brighton players were going to have an extra 25 percent, and the way they closed them down in the first half gave them the impetus. With no wing-backs coming back to help, I can’t understand why he [Potter] did that.”
