Liverpool's Daniel Sturridge and Luis Suarez can only get better, and Rodgers wants more
Liverpool's Daniel Sturridge and Luis Suarez can only get better, and Rodgers wants more
The incredible form maintained by Liverpool since January
coincides with Sturridge's transfer to the club, and things can only get
better according to Rodgers
Things, things can only get better: Sturridge, Suarez and Liverpool are all improving according to Rodgers
Clive Brunskill
By their own manager’s admission, Liverpool have not yet consistently played the football to justify their lofty Premier League position.
What they have done though, is score goals. Lots. More than any other top-flight team in 2013 in fact.
And you need look no further for an explanation of their continuing rise during the current calendar year.
Since January, the Reds
have the third best form of all the top teams, better than Manchester
City and Chelsea. It is no coincidence January was the month they signed
Daniel Sturridge.
In his 22 starts since, he has scored 19 times. Luis Suarez in his last 22 games for Liverpool from the turn of the year, has also scored 19.
Apart
from the perfect symmetry of that stat, it is also 38 goals in 44
combined appearances. And the most encouraging stat of all for
Liverpool? They have only been in the pitch together 14 times. Which
means their partnership is still developing.
No wonder then, that
Brendan Rodgers’ men are beginning to play with the swagger of a team
which knows they can win without playing well. That was a point made by
the impressive Jordan Henderson after their stroll against Palace.
“I think as a partnership Luis and Daniel can get even better,” he said.
“In training you can see the link-up play – they know instinctively where the other is going.
“I
think that partnership and their goals can be a massive factor for us.
We need to improve on keeping possession and dominating, but going
forward we’re as good as anyone.
“It’s such a tight league with so
little difference between the top teams that having the goals they
provide can really make a difference.”
Inevitably, both strikers
scored – Suarez with an audacious finish from the floor after slipping,
Sturridge with a brilliant near-post turn and strike – as Palace fell
apart in a painfully one-sided first half capped by Steven Gerrard’s
penalty just before the break.
After the interval, Liverpool took
things too easy, exposing the work that still must be done and offering
their opponents brief hope when Dwight Gayle pulled back a goal. Sturridge fires home against Crystal Palace
Andrew Powell
Yet the final whistle brought not only confirmation Palace
did not have the defensive quality to cope with such a deadly strike
force, and top spot for Liverpool, but also hope for England boss Roy
Hodgson.
Sturridge will undoubtedly play in the two qualifiers
over the course of the next nine days that will decide if England go to
the World Cup finals, and they could not have a striker in better form.
According to Reds boss Rodgers, they also could not have a better
partnership – save perhaps Liverpool’s own SAS – than the one Sturridge
will form with Wayne Rooney this week.
“If
Daniel maintains the form he is in, he’s going to be a real asset, and
if you look at him and Rooney as a combination, that would be brilliant
for England,” Rodgers explained.
“You have him and his cleverness, Rooney in behind him with and his movement between spaces and his exceptional quality.
“Dan can move but has also got that pace to really hurt teams in behind them. At that level it’s so important.
“He’s 24, scoring goals and playing well and that bodes well for him.”
It
did not bode so well for Palace and their chances of survival this
season, illustrating just how far they still have to go to even make a
fight of staying up.
As manager Ian Holloway pointed out afterwards though, at least they do not have to face Sturridge and Suarez every week.
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