Imagine if Raheem Sterling had actually done something wrong. Imagine if he had not turned up for training. Imagine if he had refused to play. Imagine if he had gone on strike. Imagine, even, if he had asked for a transfer away from Liverpool.

Imagine the opprobrium that would have been heaped upon him then. Because as it is, he has been labelled an ingrate and a fool. He has been called avaricious, capricious, disloyal and impressionable. He is in thrall, it is said, to a man portrayed as his Iago of an agent.

Sterling’s ability has been questioned and his contribution to Liverpool has been mocked. His character has been traduced and scorn has been poured upon the notion that he will ever amount to anything. For what crime exactly? Well, to be honest, it’s hard to say.

Raheem Sterling winces during Liverpool's 4-1 defeat at Arsenal to complete a tough week for the 20-year-old

Brendan Rodgers takes a deep breath as he watches his side succumb to their worst defeat of the season

Sterling is fouled by Hector Bellerin as Liverpool earn a penalty which was converted by Jordan Henderson

OK, so he has not signed the lucrative new contract that the club have put in front of him. Not yet, anyway. Given that he has more than two years left on his existing one, that is hardly a heinous act or a trigger for angst. He wants to wait to the end of the season, he says. So let him. He gave an interview to the BBC that he had not cleared with the club. Not particularly clever, admittedly. And, yes, the reference to being ‘flattered’ by Arsenal’s interest, particularly coming a couple of days before the clash between the two teams at the Emirates, was naïve. But the content of what he said was hardly incendiary.

It amounted to a softly-spoken plea for time and space. Sterling is not the kind of person to shout the odds. Maybe he wants a little while to make up his mind. That’s not what Liverpool fans want to hear but it happens. It’s life. People consider their options. It’s their right.

For what it’s worth, I hope Sterling stays at Anfield. I hope that sooner or later, he signs that new contract, or perhaps an improved version of it. At this stage of his career, leaving Liverpool is fraught with unnecessary risks.

Liverpool are a great club and they are on the rise again. They are staffed by good, intelligent, forward-thinking football people. And I can’t think of any better manager than Brendan Rodgers under whom Sterling should continue the process of maturing into one of Europe’s best players.

The 20-year-old gave an interview to the BBC on Wednesday, giving his opinion on a variety of matters

Brendan Rodgers called the interview 'a mistake' and shakes hands with his protege the day after its airing

Sterling's agent Aidy Ward is pictured sat next to Saido Berahino (centre) at Old Trafford

But none of that means I haven’t found the virulence of the reaction to Sterling’s refusal to sign immediately on the dotted line somewhat startling. The kid is only 20. Give him a break. This is, after all, an old storyline. We talk about loyalty in football as if it is a one-way street. We only apply it to footballers, not to clubs. Clubs generally have very little loyalty to players. They treat them as commodities. Or ‘expensive pieces of meat’, as Roy Keane would have it. And we don’t blink an eye.

They pay the players well when they are worth something to them. They pay them to entertain their fans. And to sell season tickets. And to allow them to keep harvesting the vast amounts of Premier League television income flooding into their coffers. And to lift them into the Champions League, where they accrue even more cash.

For the club owners, for the men who pay the wages, the relationship with a player is a business transaction. And when the player stops playing as well as he used to, when he loses his form or when he grows older and slower, or when they want to replace him with another player, they get rid of him.

Rodgers remains confident that Sterling will stay and the situation will be resolved in the summer

It’s about money. It’s that way at Manchester United and at Manchester City. It’s that way at Arsenal and at Chelsea. And it’s that way at Liverpool, too. It’s the way it is and none of us question it. Not really.

And yet we do not apply the same standards to players. We expect hard-headed business sense from the clubs but we demand that any nod to rationality is cast away when it comes to the time when players make decisions about their future.

In its stead, we demand sentimental attachment from the players to override everything. We are terribly old-fashioned about it. The players should be grateful, we seem to be saying, because Jimmy Hill got the maximum wage abolished in 1961. There are a few, at least, who see the contradictions in that stance. ‘Raheem Sterling is fully entitled to make his own mind up,’ Gary Lineker wrote on Twitter. ‘Make choices that will prove to be right or wrong. It’s his life, his career.’

Lineker is right. I hope Sterling stays at Liverpool but if he asks for time to think before he commits himself, it is absurdly unjust that he should be pilloried for it.

Raheem Sterling is fully entitled to make his own mind up. Make choices that will prove to be right or wrong. It's his life, his career. — Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) April 3, 2015

Black managers always get the worst jobs

If you are an aspiring manager in English football and you are black, you get used to one thing: when an opportunity comes your way, it’s going to be the managerial equivalent of a hospital pass.

Sorry, but it’s true. With a few exceptions, you don’t get the better opportunities. You get the football version of mopping up the toilets.

Chris Ramsey, the only black manager in the Premier League, is a classic example. Ramsey is a fine coach who has been overlooked for countless jobs.

He took the QPR position after Harry Redknapp, a talented, experienced manager with a good track record of rescuing clubs in trouble, saw the writing on the wall and got out.

Ramsey was asked to board the sinking ship and, guess what, it has not been an easy job to refloat it. Before the victory at West Brom, QPR were sliding deeper into trouble and there were already those seeking to blame it on Ramsey.

Chris Ramsey (right) and Kevin Hitchcock watch QPR hammer West Brom to keep their survival hopes alive

John Barnes' troubled reign at Celtic ended after an infamous Scottish Cup defeat by Inverness Caley Thistle

Just as predictably, there were also those saying Ramsey’s struggles were an indication black managers tend to fail on the rare occasions they are given a chance.

If Ramsey is sacked, people will say it was about results, not race. And they will be wrong. Because race was why he had to take the job in the first place.

People tend not to like inconvenient truths about why there are so few black managers in the English game. Some got angry again when John Barnes suggested a manager on a bad run will get sacked sooner if he’s black. He was right.

The fact Ramsey has been labouring to turn things around at QPR does not mean he is not a good manager. It just means that when your only chance in the game is to accept a hospital pass, the odds are you’re going to get hurt.

It was my first visit to the Juventus Stadium on Tuesday and it was hard not to be impressed by the arena’s steep sides, excellent facilities, spectacular location and fine atmosphere.

It was also hard not to notice that at a stadium with a capacity of just 41,000, there were 10,000 empty seats for a friendly against another major footballing nation.

The Juventus Stadium is a magnificent venue, but fans stayed away from the midweek international friendly

A fan takes a selfie in the midst of a sea of empty seats in Turin with only 31,138 watching the game

England played to a crowd of 83,671 as they cruised past European lightweights Lithuania 4-0 at Wembley

A few days earlier, more than 83,000 fans had packed into Wembley for England’s Euro 2016 qualifier against Lithuania.