Time for young Liverpool stars to fill Sterling void – Fowler

Liverpool great Robbie Fowler has urged the club’s young stars to step up and show their worth following the departure of Raheem Sterling.

England forward Sterling completed a move to Manchester City on Tuesday in a deal that can reportedly to rise to £49million after a drawn out transfer saga.

Sterling received criticism for his conduct over the transfer, but Fowler – who scored 183 goals across two spells at Anfield – believes Liverpool have to draw a line under the situation and look to the future.

“Raheem Sterling is a very good player. But ultimately it’s his decision, he wanted to move elsewhere,” he said. 

“As a club I think they have respected the player and it happens in football. It happened when we lost an unbelievable player in Luis Suarez and this year we’ve lost Raheem Sterling.

“It’s up to the young players now to come through and maybe try and forget about Raheem Sterling and what he’s done. Hopefully the new players will shine a little bit more.”

Fowler’s words were echoed by another Liverpool legend, Ian Rush.

“Raheem has gone now so we’ve got to look to the future. There is a lot of great players at Liverpool. We’ve got to concentrate on pre-season and the players we have,” Rush, who scored 346 goals for Liverpool, said.

“It’s like everything, everyone comes and goes. Kenny Dalglish, Luis Suarez, whoever. At the end of the day we’ll concentrate on what we’ve got and l’m looking forward to it because we have a lot of good new signings.

“I think pre-season is to gel all of them together. Hopefully when the first day of the season comes, we’ve got a team that knows each other.”