From European giants to a club struggling to finish in the top four in their domestic league, Liverpool’s fall from grace has been catastrophic. Despite their struggles, one thing the club has always had during the Premier League era is a world class striker. Ian Rush, Robbie Fowler, Michael Owen, Fernando Torres and Luis Suarez are all some of the best players to have played the game and all of them excelled in the red of Liverpool.
Daniel Sturridge from the current Liverpool side has the calibre to follow in the footsteps of some of those all-time greats and he has already bettered these players in certain aspects. However, a series of injuries is holding him back from realising his potential and there is the risk that he will gradually become just one of those players who played for Liverpool.
Sturridge joined Liverpool in January 2013 from Chelsea and hit the ground running upon arrival. He scored within seven minutes on his debut in an FA Cup game, scored on his league debut after coming on as a substitute and also scored in his first league start and home debut for the club.
At the end of the current season Sturridge will complete four and a half seasons with Liverpool – that’s one season more than the period Fernando Torres and Luis Suarez spent at the club, scoring 81 and 82 goals respectively. In addition to the goals scored by Torres and Suarez, they had a huge impact at Liverpool and the Liverpool fans will remember them for the right reasons. But the same cannot be said of Sturridge at the end of the season because of the sheer volume of matches he misses through his injuries.
Sturridge’s performance for Liverpool
Sturridge was one of the standout performers for Liverpool in that amazing 2013/14 season, but Suarez stole most of the limelight from the Englishman. In fact, many claim that Sturridge’s exceptional season was mainly due to the brilliance of the Uruguayan. This is very unfair on the former Chelsea man and statistics speak in favour of Sturridge.
When Suarez was handed a 10 game ban for biting Branislav Ivanovic, Sturridge was given the responsibility of leading the Liverpool attack and he didn’t let anyone down as he scored 11 goals and provided one assist without Suarez on the pitch. His goals against Stoke City, Aston Villa and Manchester United at the start of the 13/14 season were the lone goals of the game and ensured that Liverpool got off to a brilliant start.
The 26-year-old’s goalscoring record for Liverpool reads 59 goals in just 114 games across all competitions. Even though that’s a very good goals to games ratio, it doesn’t give a clear picture of how brilliant Sturridge has been. Owing to his fitness issues, he has either been substituted early on or he has come on as a substitute in many of those games.
He has scored 45 league goals for Liverpool with an average of 0.7 goals per 90 minutes. This is one of the best ratios for any Liverpool player past or present. If you take his total goal involvement (goals plus assists), the ratio comes to a mind-boggling 0.91! Which means that Sturridge scores a goal or provides an assist almost once every 90 minutes.
Even if you take Sturridge’s goals to games ratio for Liverpool in the Premier League, he averages 0.52 goals per game Other strikers like Suarez, Owen and Fowler average 0.63, 0.55 and 0.48 respectively. This shouldn’t come as a big surprise because Sturridge is the fastest to score 30 Premier League goals for Liverpool and the only reason why his goals to games ratio has dipped so low is because he has played a squad role under Jurgen Klopp even when he was available for selection.
Now the question is can Sturridge bounce back from his injuries? Well, he himself has provided the answer to that. In the 2014/15 season, when he returned from his injury, he came on as a substitute against West Ham and scored a goal. In the 2015/16 season, in just his second game after his return, he scored a brilliant brace against Aston Villa and these are evidence that he can perform, provided he stays fit. If you still don’t believe me, you should go watch his goal against Sevilla in the Europa League final of 2016 to remind yourself of the immense quality this man possesses.
Why patience pays
When it comes to being patient with injured players, Liverpool and Jurgen Klopp need to take a leaf out of Arsene Wenger’s book. If Arsenal were impatient with their injured players and shipped them off, then they would currently be without the likes of Aaron Ramsey, Theo Walcott and Jack Wilshere.
The best example of how Wenger’s patience with players who were regularly injured paid off can be seen from the case of another left-footed striker – Robin van Persie.
When Van Persie joined Arsenal in 2004, he wasn’t a world beater. He was just another promising player to join the Gunners from another league.
It was in the 2007/08 season when Van Persie got the opportunity to be the club’s first-choice striker that he suffered his first major injury setback. This was just the start of his problems and it continued till the 2010/11 season. During this period, Van Persie missed a huge chunk of games while he was on the treatment table.
Wenger could have opted to sell Van Persie and replaced him with someone else and Arsenal had the ability to attract another good striker, but Wenger knew of the vast potential Van Persie possessed and gave the Dutchman the time to recover from his injury problems.
The patience paid its dividends in the 2010/11 and 2011/12 seasons as Van Persie missed significantly fewer number of games and scored 22 and 37 goals for the club in these seasons respectively. In the following season, he moved to Manchester United and scored 30 goals which played a crucial role in their title win.
The catch here is that Van Persie didn’t have an explosive season like Sturridge had before his injury problems started and yet Wenger chose to stick by his player. Liverpool will have to do the same for Sturridge and if they do, they will surely benefit from it.
Can Liverpool sign a better striker than Sturridge?
Even with someone as brilliant as Jurgen Klopp at the helm, can Liverpool sign a striker who is currently better than Sturridge? The truth can be bitter at times, but sometimes you have to learn to accept it because the answer is no.
Former Liverpool player Jamie Carragher once said that Daniel Sturridge is the best striker in the Premier League after Sergio Aguero and that’s not overstating Sturridge’s quality.
Sturridge is not a typical English forward and he has the attributes to be one of the best in the world. He has pace, he has excellent dribbling skills, his positional awareness is brilliant, he has good strength, he has the ability to score with both feet and his head, he has the ability to pick a good pass to set up his teammates and on top of all his finishing is exquisite.
Sturridge has the flair that English players normally lack and that’s what makes him stand out. You will rarely see Sturridge waste a good goal scoring chance and one on one situations are his forte.
Even if some of Klopp’s old men like Robert Lewandowski or Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang are available, there are at least half a dozen clubs who can offer a better transfer fee and salary package for these players than Liverpool can, not to mention Champions League football.
If you look at Liverpool’s recent transfer history, you can see that the club lost transfer battles for players like Alexis Sanchez, Willian, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Mohamed Salah and Gylfi Sigurdsson. This is mainly down to Liverpool’s up and down performance in recent years.
In such a scenario, it would be impossible for Liverpool to sign a better player than Sturridge unless they consistently finish in the top four for at least two or three seasons.
The good news for Liverpool is that unlike previous seasons, the club has good options up front in Roberto Firmino or Divock Origi, even when Sturridge is out. So there is no emergency to bring Sturridge back. The best thing the club can do is stick by him, ensure that he is fully fit and once he is, Klopp can rotate him smartly with his other forwards so that Sturridge doesn’t pick up another injury.
Sturridge is easily Liverpool’s best striker at the moment and he can easily become one of the best in the world. Liverpool fans need to give him the support he requires and if things go well, he could make a major difference to Liverpool’s future under Jurgen Klopp.
