No Liverpool punishment for Sterling

RAHEEM STERLING will escape a club punishment after the Liverpool forward was caught on video inhaling the legal high nitrous oxide. The England international is expected to meet Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers tomorrow and he will be reminded of his professional responsibilities and warned about the consequences of taking a drug that has been called ‘hippy crack’. Rodgers questioned Sterling’s professionalism on Monday after footage emerged of the 20-year-old unconscious in his house in Southport having taken nitrous oxide with two unnamed friends. It has been a chastening

week for Sterling. Pictures were published on Sunday of him smoking a shisha pipe and a different set of images surfaced yesterday of Sterling and team-mate Jordon Ibe at a shisha cafe in London. The pictures are believed to have been taken last September. Liverpool offered no comment on those photos. The club maintain the matter will be dealt with internally but he is not going to be fined. Sterling enraged Liverpool after saying in a BBC interview that he was ‘flattered’ to be linked with Arsenal. It is understood, however, that Arsenal have gone cold on Sterling, who scored in Liverpool’s 2-0 win over Newcastle on Monday. All talks about his future have been put on hold until the end of the campaign but Ian Ayre, Liverpool’s chief executive, issued a strong line yesterday, insisting that Sterling — who has turned down a contract in the region of £100,000 per week — would be at Anfield for a ‘long time’.