There’s a contradictory paradox surrounding Raheem Sterling’s £49m move to Manchester City.

For the most part, the 20-year-old has been condemned as the spoiled kid of English football, accused of kicking his toys out the pram and conducting daily temper tantrums – probably doing that arm-flailing-seizure-type ploy you’ll see from toddlers in shopping centres – to force his way out of Liverpool.

Has Sterling gone about the situation in the wrong way? Probably. That interview with the BBC wasn’t a particularly bright idea; neither was letting agent Aidy Ward tell the Evening Standard that he wouldn’t sign a £900k per-week contract at Anfield; and neither was pulling a sickie for the first two days of pre-season training. The England international’s PR team have done him few favours over the last four months.

Then again, criticism of Sterling’s hesitance to extend his Reds contract past 2017 started way before the BBC interview in April, and there weren’t too many complaining about Gareth Bale taking an unsanctioned leave of absence before he headed off to Real Madrid in the summer of 2013. In fact, why would Liverpool or Spurs even want such players in training just days before selling them for sizable fortunes? Nobody’s going to smash the world-record transfer fee on someone with a broken leg.

Likewise, the Merseysiders have hardly come out of the situation embarrassed; they’ve made £48,400,000 on a £600k signing that a) didn’t want to play for them anymore and b) had publicly refused to sign a new contract. City paid Liverpool almost the same amount Chelsea did for World Cup winning striker Fernando Torres in January 2011, for a player with less than 100 league appearances under his belt who might well have already reached the limits of his footballing powers. What’s there really to complain about?

Most hypocritical, however, is the general consensus amongst English pundits of Sterling being ungrateful and disloyal to Liverpool; from the same pundits who continually harp on about the dearth of home-grown talent and how young English players aren’t given the same opportunities at major clubs anymore.

Let’s face it. Liverpool aren’t exactly a winning ticket at the moment. They’ve won two major trophies in the last decade, qualified for the Champions League just once in six seasons and haven’t lifted a league title since 1990. They’re a crumbling empire who have been forced to sell all their talismanic entities to Europe’s top clubs spanning back to Steve McManaman and Michael Owen. Even the last bastion of Liverpudlian loyalty, Steven Gerrard, was once just a car ride away from joining Chelsea.

So if you’re Roy Hodgson or an England fan, you should be rejoicing right now. Instead of propping up a side who appear doomed to the Europa League, Sterling will be involved in Premier League title races and the Champions League for the best part of the next decade with virtual guarantee. It can only improve him as an international player, with regular exposure to high-pressure, extremely technical games, large pitches and paramount quality of opposition, so once again, what the heck is everybody moaning about?

In my opinion, it’s no different to Manchester United prising Wayne Rooney away from Everton back in summer 2004. The future England skipper hadn’t gone public with his desires to leave Goodison Park, but did hand in a formal transfer request after rejecting a £50k per-week contract.

I don’t remember too many pitchfork mobs turning up at Rooney manor eleven years ago; I don’t remember too many journalists painting him out as some spoiled brat who didn’t know he was born, despite joining United when he was younger than Sterling, after fewer top flight appearances, and actually being a Mersey-born, boyhood Everton fan. Sterling, on the other hand, grew up in London and was poached from QPR’s academy in 2010.

So what’s the difference? Primarily, the idea that Everton are a small club and Liverpool are a big one, that Manchester United are an irrefusable club but their noisy neighbours, despite winning two Premier League titles in the last four years, still aren’t. In other words, snobbery – powered by the weight of history, prestige and reputation whilst ignoring what the future most likely holds.

Sterling may have played the game a little to ensure he’d leave Anfield this summer, but what footballer hasn’t? Rooney handed in two transfer requests in three years at United before becoming club captain and the best-paid player in Premier League history. That’s not a coincidence.

In my opinion, the only true outrage is the size of his transfer fee. At this point, he clearly doesn’t deserve to be the most expensive Englishman in the history of football, the third-most expensive Premier League transfer of all time or for that matter, probably not even City’s club-record signing. But in a capitalist society you’re worth whatever somebody’s willing to pay, and whether it will prove shrewd or stupid, City were prepared to break records to bring him to the Etihad.