Raheem Sterling laughing gas: Liverpool will not punish forward over 'hippy crack' video

Raheem Sterling will not be punished by Liverpool for his “hippy crack” episode with the club and Brendan Rodgers preferring instead to take a less confrontational position after a tense two weeks in relations with the player.

The Liverpool manager will meet with Sterling on Thursday a day after the Hillsborough memorial service which takes place tomorrow at Anfield and remind him of his responsibilities as a professional footballer. The discussion is expected to be of a more paternalistic nature with the acceptance on Liverpool’s part that although the video of Sterling at home inhaling nitrous oxide – known as “hippy crack” – does not reflect well on him, it is not illegal.

The club do not feel that his actions fall under any sanction for damaging the reputation of the club. However, Rodgers is concerned that this is the second instance in the space of a few days that friends of Sterling have leaked compromising pictures of the 20-year-old into the public sphere and that he needs to look carefully whether his trust has been betrayed.

The hippy crack video, uploaded by The Sun onto their website on Monday night, followed the Snapchat picture of Sterling smoking a shisha pipe in the Sunday Mirror. Yet the club are keen to keep relations with the player cordial following his outspoken interview with the BBC on 1 April which took Liverpool by surprise and demonstrated just how determined the England international was to dictate how his future will play out at the club.

That Sterling has not been sanctioned by Liverpool for that interview, nor the shisha or the hippy crack episodes, suggests that the club are adopting a position of the least confrontation possible with the player.

It now looks highly unlikely that Sterling will sign a new contract at the club with interest registered in him from Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United as well Bayern Munich and Real Madrid. He has two years left on his contract and while Liverpool have said that he is not for sale the issue now seems destined to be resolved this summer.

One option that is open to Sterling is the invoking of Fifa’s Article 17 governing transfers which would allow him to buy out the final year of the two left on his deal. Most notably tested in British football in the transfer of Andy Webster from Heart of Midlothian to Wigan in 2006, Article 17 is often threatened in contract disputes but – in recent years – rarely used.

It would shorten Sterling’s contract by a year and make his sale this summer the only serious option for Liverpool in order to realise his full market value. In a contract negotiation where nothing is off the table it is understood that Article 17 remains a possibility for Sterling but it is a volatile route for any player to take and compromise tends to be reached before that point.

Buying clubs are wary of it because of the Court of Arbitration for Sport decision in 2009 over the Article 17-driven transfer of the Brazilian Matuzalem from Shakhtar Donetsk to Real Zaragoza. In that case the Ukrainian club opposed the original Fifa ruling which set the buy-out fee at €6.8m and CAS raised it to €11.8m. The decision was eventually overturned in the Swiss courts but not before the player had been suspended from playing.

Sterling has left all decisions on his future until the end of the season but the player is determined to be a regular in a Champions League side. His homegrown status makes him particularly attractive to clubs such as Manchester City and Chelsea who have a shortage of those players on their squad lists.