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A necessary evil.

“Something that is undesirable but must be accepted: for example, paying taxes” says the dictionary.

Liverpool Football Club’s necessary evil – assuming no Loic Remy-style medical complications – will of course involve the exact opposite.

The sale of Raheem Sterling, named the club’s Young Player of the Year less than two months ago, will rather produce a huge financial windfall.

The £49m fee agreed with Manchester City on Sunday for the disaffected 20-year-old has many Reds fans celebrating. They are revelling in what they regard as a genuine triumph for Reds’ owners FSG and the ‘£50m or no deal’ stance they have taken since it became all too clear that Sterling was determined to extricate himself from Anfield.

Quite simply many believe Sterling is not worth that money, for all his undoubted potential and flashes of brilliance. For all his status as Liverpool’s top scorer from open play last year. For all his naming as Europe’s Golden Boy, the best young player in the continent just seven months ago. For all his stunning performances in the title run-in of 2013/14, not least bamboozling two of his future team-mates in Vincent Kompany and Joe Hart in a show of devastating poise in front of an enthralled, delirious Kop.

The most expensive English player in history? In the top dozen most expensive players of all time? He’s all yours mate – and he’s trouble. Dodgy finisher too.

No less a judge than Jamie Carragher described it as “a great deal for Liverpool”.

Tactics made the transfer necessary but no more desirable

Carra said: “Raheem Sterling is a very good young player but he has not yet hit the heights of an Owen, Rooney, Fowler or Giggs at this stage of his career, so there’s no doubt £49m is a great deal for Liverpool.”

Really?

The desperate, unseemly and reputation-destroying tactics of Sterling and his agent Aidy Ward to secure his move to the Etihad should not mask what a loss the player will be. Their actions put the ‘necessary’ into the transfer but do not make it any less ‘undesirable’.

The money – a profit of at least £35m even when QPR’s 20% slice is accounted for – is welcome but of course spending it will be just as important. Liverpool’s two previous huge sales under FSG – that of £50m Torres in 2011 and £75m Suarez last summer – have been followed by spending which can at best be described as mixed and at worst as downright wasteful.

Carragher certainly called this one right on his Twitter feed: “I wish Liverpool bought players as good as they sold them” he said last night.

And good buys are even harder to come by when potential sellers can see the £40m wad burning a hole in the pocket of your club-sponsored trackie and a Premier League kick-off just four weeks over the summer horizon.

“I hear you’ve got some tough games early on Mr Ayre? £32m is the best I can do”.

Manchester City looked perhaps the most vulnerable of Reds' top four rivals

The other great undesirable of this deal is Sterling’s new home.

Weakening your own team is one thing, strengthening a key opponent’s quite another.

If Brendan Rodgers is to take Liverpool back into the Promised Land of the Champions League – and he will probably have to to keep his job – he must unship one of Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United or City from the top four.

Chelsea, champions at a canter with the league’s outstanding manager.

Arsenal, emboldened by FA Cup triumphs, speak of titles, not top four. We’ve heard it all before of course but 18 Champions League spots in a row tell their own story.

United, a more attractive proposition for Memphis Depay despite Anfield’s call. A World Cup winner in Schweinsteiger joining the mix, a squad deep enough to make Van Persie expendable.

City, then, oil-rich yes but probably the team with perhaps the most potential to slip. In Kompany and Yaya Toure, two talismen who showed previously unseen frailities last season. Perhaps just a bad Sergio Aguero injury away from being genuinely vulnerable. A manager keeping the seat warm for another.

Of course City want Liverpool’s best young player. Of course they were prepared to pay for it. Of course they were prepared to pay big.

It may not work out – a huge proportion of transfers don’t. Liverpool may have an ideal replacement already in place in the bigger, stronger Jordon Ibe. Roberto Firmino may be everything we hope he can be.

But all those things are for the future.

For now, there is no cause for celebration. There never is with a necessary evil.