Spare a thought for Raheem Sterling. Recently turned 20 he has been offered an insulting contract from Liverpool.

How dare they offer him £70,000 a week. Have they not seen how much they offer experienced defender Glen Johnson? 

If Johnson is worth over £100,000 a week then Sterling must be worth double that. Especially with Spanish giants Real Madrid waiting in the wings, ready to offer the England youngster all the naps he wants in sunny Spain.

It’s not like the large majority of footballers are paid vast amounts anyway. They have to scrape their weekly earnings so they can just about afford their million pound mansions. Poor them.

Sterling should look at the banner displayed at Anfield a few weeks ago which read: “Let me tell you a story of a poor boy. 1990, £4. 2000, £24. 2010, £43. 2020, ?” 

While Sterling fights for his extra £30,000+ a week, he should remember that the rest of the staff at the club aren’t being paid the living wage and are fighting for £9.15 an hour.

Or that fans are fighting not to be ripped off for ticket prices.

But let’s be honest, players don’t care how much fans have to pay for tickets, with former player Robbie Savage saying in October: “To be completely honest, during my 20-year career, I never once thought about how much it was costing fans to go to games.”

And they clearly don’t care how much the staff who cook their lunches are paid, as long as their food is hot and on time.

While you can argue he deserves to be paid what he feels he deserves, the club think for a kid — and in footballing terms he is still a kid — he is not at a level where he can demand that high a wage, especially if you consider that he is currently on a basic salary of £30,000 a week (which doesn’t factor in bonuses).

They surely want him at the club for the next decade, meaning he will probably sign three or four new contracts in that space should he stay.

If they were to give him over £100k now, what will he demand when he reaches his prime?

He obviously feels he is not doing anything wrong, just trying to negotiate a new contract which he has every right to do. And he is probably annoyed that these private meetings have been leaked and now people know just how much he is trying to get from the club that employ him.

But I’m not calling him greedy, I’ll let the Kop call him that as he continues to hold the club to ransom. At a time when the club are not doing as well and may miss out on the lucrative Champions League next season unless they can rediscover their form from last season.

Sterling should focus on trying to get the club back up the table, not on getting a few extra zeroes on his weekly payslip.

As they say, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Apply that to Bernie Ecclestone and his views on social media and it makes perfect sense.

His comments regarding the introduction of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc into the world of Formula One were quite disturbing if I’m honest.

Him not wanting to draw in the next generation because they don’t have any money is such a prehistoric way of looking at things.

“They haven’t got enough money to put in the bloody banks anyway,” he said. “That’s what I think.

“I don’t know why people want to get to the so-called young generation. Why do they want to do that? Is it to sell them something? Most of these kids haven’t got any money.

“I’d rather get to the 70-year-old guy who’s got plenty of cash. So, there’s no point trying to reach these kids because they won’t buy any of the products here, and if marketers are aiming at this audience, then maybe they should advertise with Disney.”

Well if you look at Disney and other companies their marketing strategy has worked for decades and is a viable long-term plan — even if you don’t agree with them drawing in kids from a young age and continuing to take their money decades later.

Just because they won’t make Ecclestone any money now doesn’t mean they won’t in the future. The 15-year-olds of today will be 70 and whether he likes it or not, the children really are the future.

I understand it is difficult to make money from apps and the internet in general but F1 isn’t the only sport to have this problem and others seem to be finding a solution much easier than Ecclestone is.

It’s not until he realised how many people used the F1 app he began to explore the idea of expanding how much the sport engages with the public online.

The fact it has taken him this long to realise that the world is evolving highlights the argument that there needs to be a change.

Teams such as Ferrari and Mercedes are attempting to draw in the next generation of fans and are going about it the right way. By engaging with them on Twitter and social media, something Ecclestone laughed at.

The 84-year-old wants the day-to-day running to be taken over by his advisor Sacha Woodward-Hill when he retires. Given his comments about social media and his “chequered” past, he may want to push that date closer.