{"id":657170,"date":"2025-07-23T08:22:25","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T12:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=657170"},"modified":"2025-07-23T08:22:25","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T12:22:25","slug":"leverkusen-raheem-sterling-plettenberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/07\/23\/leverkusen-raheem-sterling-plettenberg\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Not a Target’: Reporter Crushes Hopes as ‘Terrible’ Chelsea Man Has No Suitors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Raheem Sterling looks likely to remain at Chelsea for the time being after Florian Plettenberg squashed rumours that Bayer Leverkusen were interested in the winger. The Bundesliga expert reported<\/a> the veteran is “not a target” and that previous reports were “wide of the mark” which will leave Blues fans crushed as they hope to offload the club’s highest earner.<\/p>\n

No Hope of Leverkusen Escape for Raheem Sterling<\/h2>\n

Terrible Signing<\/h3>\n

After arriving from Manchester City the trophy-laden attacker had a pretty poor stint under Mauricio Pochettino. He was lambasted by former players and some media for “terrible game<\/a>” performances and by fans for some selfishness despite not delivering on the pitch.<\/p>\n

Read More:\u00a0<\/strong>Best Chelsea Players to Wear the Number 10 Jersey Ever<\/a><\/p>\n

He wasn’t even given a chance to impress Enzo Maresca, instead being farmed out on loan to Arsenal where he had another dismal spell, barely seeing any meaningful game time while donning the red jersey.<\/p>\n

Leverkusen Not Interested<\/h3>\n

The German side are in an interesting spot following the departure of league-winning manager Xabi Alonso. They have sold star man Florian Wirtz for a huge fee and currently have money to reinvest. They emerged as a potential suitor for Sterling as his career history is no doubt worth a punt.<\/p>\n

Despite that, Plettenberg was quick to shut down these rumours and indicates that the Bundesliga team genuinely aren’t interested in the forward. No reasoning was mentioned but his wage demands would likely price him out of their region even if he took a wage cut.<\/p>\n

Read More:\u00a0<\/strong>Chelsea Exodus Could Pave Way for Xavi Simons Transfer \u2013 Likely Departures Named<\/a><\/p>\n

The former Liverpool and Manchester City man has seen his stock fall off a cliff heavily since leaving Pep Guardiola’s system. Back-to-back poor seasons with top teams will likely see most major European teams put off of taking a punt on him. At that point, only Saudi Arabia or the MLS look like possible destinations for him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Raheem Sterling looks likely to remain at Chelsea for the time being after Florian Plettenberg squashed rumours that Bayer Leverkusen were interested in the winger. The Bundesliga expert reported the veteran is “not a target” and that previous reports were “wide of the mark” which will leave Blues fans crushed as they hope to offload […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2013,"featured_media":650203,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4,3,7188],"tags":[8611,386],"class_list":["post-657170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-bundesliga","category-premier-league","category-rumours","tag-chelsea-transfer-rumours","tag-raheem-sterling"],"modified_by":"Alex Richards, LWOF Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2013"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":657171,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657170\/revisions\/657171"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}