Regarding the "leniency" of the sentence, what makes it even more mental - and I think I've got the gist of this right - is that despite him being a known football hooligan who attacked a footballer on the morning of a football match, it doesn't come under the scope of a "football related" offence. That's because to be considered as such, he would've had to have been travelling to or from a match he was attending or intending to attend. In other words, if he got caught throwing a punch at an opposition fan at or outside a football stadium that didn't even connect then he'd have got a far heavier sentence because it's deemed as being a "football related" offence even though in the eyes of pretty much everyone on here - with the possible exception of one poster on this thread, and maybe a couple of posters in the blackface thread - that would be a lesser offence than what he actually did to Sterling.