<\/p>\n
Raheem Sterling <\/strong><\/p>\n Raheem Sterling can help shape Chelsea as they attempt to close the gap on Manchester City and Liverpool, head coach Thomas Tuchel says.<\/p>\n The England forward, 27, has joined Chelsea from City for \u00a350m on a five-year deal, the first signing by the club\u2019s new American owners \u2013 with Tuchel hoping there are more to come.<\/p>\n \u201cHopefully he shapes our team by just being who he is,\u201d Tuchel told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n \u201cHe will be a huge asset for us.\u201d<\/p>\n Tuchel added: \u201cFor me, he is a huge player, with a huge influence in the last years in English football and he\u2019s in a perfect age to now take responsibility around young players that we have and be an example.<\/p>\n \u201cGetting what he delivered for years given his age, his hunger for responsibility, and his style of play and his amount of intensity is outstanding.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is the benchmark in the Premier League and is exactly what we need.\u201d<\/p>\n Tuchel says that Sterling\u2019s signing \u201cis not the end\u201d, with Napoli defender Kalidou Koulibaly set to sign a four-year deal and Manchester City centre-back Nathan Ake also close to joining.<\/p>\n The manager is keen to strengthen defensively after losing Antonio Rudiger to Real Madrid and Andreas Christensen to Barcelona.<\/p>\n But he said the club have had to \u201cwork smart and fast\u201d to keep up with their Premier League rivals, with ownership issues holding up their ability to make transfer plans following the sanctioning of Roman Abramovich in March.<\/p>\n The new ownership, led by United States co-owner Todd Boehly, took over from Abramovich in May, with restrictions placed on the club lifted.<\/p>\n Tuchel says he has a \u201cvery intense, very close\u201d relationship with Boehly, who has also taken on the role of interim sporting director after recruitment and transfer specialists Petr Cech and Marina Granovskaia departed last month.<\/p>\n \u201cThe relationship [with the owners] is very intense, very close, which it has to be \u2013 because without Petr and without Marina, it\u2019s a big change in the daily structure and communication,\u201d Tuchel said from Los Angeles as the team prepared for their pre-season tour of the US.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a lot more involved. I have to step up in terms of responsibility. I think in the long term or even when the close of the pre-season comes, I will want to be more on the coaching role again.<\/p>\n \u201cBut right now it\u2019s important to improve our team, to bring players in to stay competitive because we want to compete for a minimum of top four. Given the fact that Tottenham, Liverpool, Manchester City, Arsenal and Manchester United act on the transfer market for weeks and months, we need to be smart, we need to be fast and we need to find solutions. It\u2019s my job to help.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Raheem Sterling Raheem Sterling can help shape Chelsea as they attempt to close the gap on Manchester City and Liverpool, head coach Thomas Tuchel says. The England forward, 27, has joined Chelsea from City for \u00a350m on a five-year deal, the first signing by the club\u2019s new American owners \u2013 with Tuchel hoping there are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1150037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[58,793,9162],"class_list":["post-1150035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-chelsea","tag-shape","tag-sterling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1150035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1150035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1150035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1150035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}