It has always been one of the more curious aspects of football how some players seem to be more affected by injuries than others.
Many Liverpool players of the glory years of the 1960s, 70s and 80s have revealed they would often hide knocks and play through the pain barrier due to their fear at losing their place in the team which could take months to regain, with legendary manager Bill Shankly said to take unavailability almost as a personal affront and prone to cold-shouldering them until fitness was regained.
The medical advances and sports science at the heart of the modern era, coupled with changes to the laws of the game, mean players now are generally better protected from the agricultural and sometimes brutal treatment which used to be dished out in the ‘good old days’.
Yet that does not entirely explain how some individuals are able to absorb as severe treatment from opponents as is now permitted while barely missing a game - Mohamed Salah for example or the Reds’ previous striking talisman, Luis Suarez - while others, such as the Urguayan’s main strike partner during his time at Anfield Daniel Sturridge, find their undoubted and enthralling ability compromised and let down by their own body.
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The Birmingham-born forward’s time on Merseyside saw him produce moments of startling quality comparable with some of Liverpool’s greatest ever frontmen and straddled the agonising 2014 Premier League title near-miss to the start of the golden era currency being enjoyed under Jurgen Klopp but was fatally hampered with frustrating lay-offs which left all concerned ruing what might have been had he been able to get on the pitch more often.
Sturridge’s status as one of the naturally gifted strikers of his generation was evident long before he arrived in L4. Having represented both Aston Villa and Coventry City in his native midlands at youth level, he join Manchester City’s Academy at the age of 14 in 2003 and first appeared on the radar of Liverpool fans three years later when his brace in the second leg of the FA Youth Cup final almost overturned the Reds’ three-goal first-leg advantage. He made his first team breakthrough at the Etihad the following year but was hampered by a hip injury and, despite being voted City’s young player of the year in 2008/09, left to join Chelsea that summer at the end of his contract, with a tribunal deciding the Londoners’ should pay potentially up to £8.3m with add-ons.
He would spend three-and-a-half years at Stamford Bridge, interspersed with a successful six-month loan spell at Bolton Wanderers, but despite playing bit-part roles in Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League triumphs, he struggled to truly establish himself even though his potential and obvious talent won him a first senior England call-up as well as a place in the Great Britain team at the 2012 London Olympics.
Liverpool tried to bring him on loan to Anfield that summer as a replacement for Andy Carroll but negotiations stalled after Sturridge made clear his preference was a permanent move. By the following January the position had changed after a difficult first half-season in charge for new manager Brendan Rodgers and the Reds wasted no time by announcing within hours of the transfer window opening that a £12m deal had been agreed to bring the 23-year-old to Anfield.
“It was important to us that we did all of the work ahead of the transfer window in talking to Chelsea and the player and his representatives”, said chief executive Ian Ayre. “We made sure we did that so we could hit the ground running in January - and here we are today on the second and we're all done and dusted. Daniel is somebody we've always had in our sights and somebody the manager has had huge interest in right from the start. I'm very pleased that we've got the right player and the right deal."
Rodgers had known Sturridge since he was a 12-year-old at Coventry and praised his new acquisition’s quality and hunger while sounding a warning over the need to deliver on his undoubted potential, saying: “If he wants to stay at this level, this is probably his last chance. We are bringing in a player who knows he has to perform.”
The player himself was under no illusions over the opportunity being handed to him and insisted he had made no demands nor been given assurances over a central striking role, which was reportedly one of the reasons behind his desire to leave Chelsea.
"I'm humbled and happy to be here”, he said. "I've not signed here to play for a couple of years and then move on. I've signed to be here for as long as possible. It's a humongous club - for me, one of the biggest in the world. To have the fans and world-class players we have here is amazing. I see myself as a striker. I think I perform best there because my attributes, I believe, are used best as a central striker. But I have played on the wing and have learned a lot doing so. I'd never refuse to play in that position and I've never demanded to play up front, either. For me, whatever the manager wants me to do I will do it and work as hard as I can for the club and the fans. I'll try to put a smile on the fans' faces and try to bring some success to the club - it would be amazing.”
His self-belief and confidence were very much intact despite the frustrations which had dogged his career so far as shown by his first interaction with the man with whom he would go on to form one of Liverpool’s most lethal striking partnerships, Luis Suarez.
“The first time I spoke to Daniel at Melwood, he surprised me by saying, ‘Together, you and I can do something big here’", the Uruguayan revealed. "It’s natural that players can feel that a new signing is going to compete with them for a place and I’m no different. Nor, I assumed, was Daniel. It’s not normal for a new player to be quite so bold as Daniel was that day, and I did momentarily think, ‘What’s this guy saying that to me for?’ But right from the start, he saw it as the two of us going out there together. I had watched him play and I liked him a lot. I could see that he could make a difference. When I watched him in training, my appreciation for his ability grew. I knew that he was quick, but the way that he could finish really struck me. Every shot went in. Every time. He had the talent and Liverpool offered him the opportunity and continuity that he hadn’t had at Chelsea. He had the ambition to make sure that if he was given that, he would perform.”
Sturridge wasted little time in showing how keen he was to seize his opportunity, taking just seven minutes on his debut to score in an FA Cup third round victory at Mansfield Town, and becoming the first Liverpool player since Ray Kennedy in 1974 to notch on his first three Reds appearances with further strikes against Manchester United - in front of soon-to-depart manager Alex Ferguson who had labelled his move to Anfield ‘a gamble’ - and Norwich City.
After a somewhat underwhelming summer transfer window which had only seen new manager Rodgers bring in Joe Allen from his former club Swansea City along with youngsters Fabio Borini, Oussama Assaidi, Samed Yesil and Nuri Sahin on loan, Sturridge was joined at the end of January by Brazilian attacking midfielder Philippe Coutinho from Inter Milan and the pair added a new dimension as the Reds’ season - which had seen them slump to 10th in the Premier League table after a miserable Boxing Day defeat at Stoke City - gradually began to pick up.
Battling draws away to Arsenal and Manchester City - the latter of which featured a blistering Sturridge equaliser rifled home from the edge of the penalty area with minimal backlift, to highlight already the range of goals he was able to score - showed the additional attacking threat Liverpool now posed and a mid-February 5-0 home rout of Rodgers’ former club Swansea featuring strikes from both January signings sparked an impressive run of only one defeat in the final 12 games of the season which, while being unable to lift the Reds any higher than seventh or secure European qualification, raised hopes of better days ahead.
Key to that optimism was the burgeoning rapport between Sturridge and Suarez which was demonstrated to full effect in a late April home game against Chelsea, as well as the baggage that came with it. With Liverpool trailing to Oscar’s first half effort, the Reds’ strike pairing linked up to devastating effect seven minutes into the second half when Stewart Downing diverted a Glen Johnson pass into the Uruguayan’s path and his sumptuous first-time chip enabled Sturridge to guide home the equaliser without breaking stride. The England forward returned the favour deep into stoppage time by floating over a cross which Suarez headed home to grab a point for Rodgers’ men after Chelsea had re-taken the lead but that would prove to be a mere footnote in the post-match discussion due to Uruguayan’s actions a few minutes earlier.
Frustrated at having given away the penalty only five minutes after Sturridge’s equaliser which enabled Eden Hazard to put the visitors back in front and by tight Chelsea marking as Liverpool chased the game, television cameras picked up Suarez sinking his teeth into Branislav Ivanovic’s arm and biting the defender as they tussled in the box. Although missed by referee Kevin Friend at the time, the Football Association soon took retrospective action and banned the Uruguayan - who had been involved in a similar biting incident during his time in Holland with Ajax - for ten matches, casting a shadow over not only the end of that season but the start of the next one.
Sturridge stepped up in his strike partner’s absence, scoring twice the following weekend in a 6-0 win at Newcastle and bagging a hat-trick a fortnight later at Fulham to finish his first half season at Anfield with a more-than-respectable 11 goals in 16 appearances but anticipation over the resumption of his partnership with Suarez the following season once the latter’s ban (which still had six games to run) ended was thrown into jeopardy when the Uruguayan pleaded with Liverpool to fulfil a promise he claimed they’d made 12 months previously to let him leave if the club did not qualify for the Champions League. The club refused to let him go and took a firm stance, dismissing Arsenal’s £40,000,001 bid for the player and initially making him train away from the first team squad when he eventually returned to pre-season training before slowly reintegrating him.
Spanish forward Iago Aspas arrived from Celta Vigo to bolster Rodgers’ options up front but it meant there was increased onus on Sturridge as the 2013/14 campaign began to shoulder the goalscoring burden until Suarez’s return. An ankle injury the previous May had seen him used only sporadically during pre-season but he ensured Liverpool got off to the perfect start, scoring the only goal in each of the first three Premier League matches to send the Reds top. The middle one of those was against Manchester United, on the England forward’s 24th birthday, and Steven Gerrard revealed in his autobiography a conversation he had with Sturridge before that match which illustrated the difference between the Reds’ two main front men and their ability to manage their own fitness.
“I was always desperate to play against United, even if there had been more defeats than victories”, he wrote. “It seemed different for Daniel Sturridge. My memories of that game are dominated by the build-up, and Daniel feeling he was touch and go in terms of his fitness and his desire to play. Facing Man U without Luis was tough enough, but if we lost Daniel as well, most of our ammunition would be gone. We stayed at the Hope Street Hotel and had our usual team walk before the match. I positioned myself so that I walked next to Daniel for the whole 15 minutes. I had to try to persuade him to play. I knew how badly we needed him to get three points against United… our best chance of beating United was with Sturridge leading the line.
“Daniel is one of those people you have to boost sometimes with a ‘Come on! You're our main man, just go for it!’ You never needed to say that to Luis. It was almost as if he was indestructible. I don’t think he ever missed a game through injury at Liverpool. I remember him playing against Arsenal with a hamstring injury. That's the Suarez mentality. Luis Suarez would run through a brick wall for you. Some players with unbelievable talent are also born with additional gifts - toughness, resilience, sheer belief. Others have more vulnerability and self-doubt. It’s as simple as that. Luis and Daniel had different mentalities. Daniel was someone you had to reassure every now and again. But before the Man United game it was more complicated. He had a genuine niggle and he didn’t feel right.
“I had spoken to Chris Morgan and Glen Driscoll, our head of performance about Daniel’s injury - because I couldn’t try and persuade him to play if he was not fit enough. They said he had an issue with his thigh but they were sure he’d be fine and just needed an encouraging push so backed me to reassure Daniel he was medically fit to play. He and the other physios, as well as the manager, had tried to cajole him into playing without any success. It was yet another of my tasks as captain, but I was probably more like a fan on the walk trying to persuade Daniel, eventually begging him to play. I said if it was no good after 10 or 15 minutes, he could come off. I said all the fans, and everyone in the team, would appreciate him giving it a go. I was trying to boost Daniel, to help him find the confidence in himself to ignore the pain and take a small risk by playing. But I also wanted to win the match. I was desperate to have Daniel on at the start. ‘Alright’, Daniel said, ‘I’ll give it a go’. At last I could turn my attention to United.”
Suarez returned to Liverpool’s Premier League starting line-up at Sunderland at the end of September with two goals - both assisted by his strike partner, who scored the opener in the Reds’ 3-1 win - and their partnership seemed to ascend to a new level, as exemplified by the resounding home win over West Brom a month later which kept Rodgers’ men in second place behind early pace-setters Arsenal with Sturridge somehow managing to steal Suarez’s thunder despite an outstanding Suarez hat-trick by putting the seal on a 4-1 win with a sublime chip over hapless Baggies’ keeper Boaz Myhill which had the Kop drooling.
A first league defeat of the season the following weekend at the Emirates was something of a reality check for those beginning to wonder what Liverpool’s seriously impressive start could lead to and, while Sturridge continued to add to his varied range of goals soon afterwards with a vital late headed equaliser in a 3-3 Merseyside derby draw at Everton, an ankle ligament injury picked up in training soon afterwards meant he would not feature again until mid-January. The Reds’ stellar early-season form had already seen Anfield legend John Barnes suggest they were the club’s best side since the 1988 'Better than the Brazilians' iteration he starred in and - like during his Sturridge's early-season absence - Suarez now stepped up, an improved attitude since his summer misdemeanours seeing him named captain and opening the scoring in a startling 5-0 away win at Tottenham in mid-December before adding two more the following weekend - the day after he put pen to paper on a new contract to seemingly end speculation over his future - in a 3-1 victory over Cardiff City to take his season’s tally in the Premier League to 19 and put the Reds top of the table at Christmas.
Sturridge returned to action at Stoke on 12th January with a brilliant juggled effort in a see-saw 5-3 Liverpool win and later that month scored twice in a 4-0 rout of Everton at Anfield which highlighted again the brilliant yet tense relationship between the two star strikers, Sturridge being substituted midway through the second half under something of a cloud despite his brilliant first half brace after blazing a penalty over the bar and incurring further Suarez wrath when failing to pass to his better-placed partner.
“There was always a little bit of needling rivalry between Sturridge and Suarez”, Steven Gerrard wrote in his book. “SAS was not a partnership in the mould of John Toshack and Kevin Keegan. Suarez and Sturridge worked instead as two gifted individuals. Brendan often spoke about the fact that they were like soloists vying with each other rather than playing together as a harmonious duo. They never said much to each other in training but their skill and vision still produced a telepathy on the pitch. It was a dream to play behind them. One would come short, the other would go long and, suddenly, unlike when only Torres was up front, I had two striking options for my next pass and it worked beautifully.
“Each was happy enough if the other scored. I didn’t see them having the selfishness of Cristiano Ronaldo, who just has to be the main man. It never got nasty but there was an edge between them. There probably were some games when Luis was a bit heavy on Daniel. We kept an eye on it but it didn’t matter that Sturridge and Suarez would never be mates. If they shared fifty goals a season I wouldn’t care if they never said as many words to each other.”
Sturridge scored his sixth goal in five matches after returning from injury at West Brom the weekend after the Anfield derby and, while a Kolo Toure error allowed former Everton forward Victor Anichebe to equalise and salvage a point for the relegation-threatened Baggies, it proved a turning point in Liverpool’s season. Six days later league leaders Arsenal were torn apart at Anfield in the first twenty minutes at Anfield, going four goals behind in the first twenty minutes and losing 5-1 with Rodgers’ men embarking on a run of eleven consecutive league victories which suddenly put them in with a very real chance of winning that first Premier League title Liverpudlians had been craving for close to a quarter of a century.
The emergence of Raheem Sterling, now showing his true potential after breaking through as a 17-year-old two seasons earlier, along with Philippe Coutinho’s growing influence as he adapted to life on Merseyside were undoubtedly key factors but the Sturridge-Suarez partnership lay at the heart of the Reds’ seemingly-unstoppable march to glory. They would finish the campaign as the two top Premier League goalscorers (the first time both had been from the same club in the modern era) with fifty-two league goals - not one of them a penalty - between them, becoming the first Liverpool strike partnership to hit 20 goals each in a single season since Ian St John and Roger Hunt 50 years ago.
They were even beginning to exhibit the kind of telepathy associated with predecessors Kevin Keegan and John Toshack, the middle goal of Suarez’s hat-trick in the late March 6-3 victory at Cardiff being created by an astonishing ‘blind’ backheel into the Uruguayan’s path by his Birmingham-born strike partner. But the harsh reality is, having done so much to put Liverpool in with a sensational title shot, the goals dried up for the pair just when they were needed most, only managing three between them in April and May as the Reds were unable to get over the line despite needing just seven points from their final three games and being edged out by Manchester City.
Sturridge had picked up an injury in the seismic mid-April Anfield victory over City which caused him to miss the following week’s trip to Norwich and saw him only fit enough for a place on the bench for the infamous and costly home defeat to Chelsea and spoke of his hurt and hope after scoring his 21st league goal of the season in the ultimately futile final day win over Newcastle.
“I know we’ve gone from seventh to second but I am never happy coming second no matter what I’m playing, whether it’s table tennis, cricket or whatever, I don’t like losing. I know we set the target of reaching the Champions League but I can’t stand here and say I’m happy. We’re all hungry for success and the fans deserve success. They’ve given us great support from the first minute to the last and I apologise to them for not winning the Premier League. I’ll do everything in my power, just like my team-mates will, to try to ensure we do that for them next season. I believe we can. People can make excuses about how we had an advantage because we weren’t in Europe this season but I know we will be contenders again next season. We will take the positives from this season and learn from the negatives. This experience will stand us in good stead for next season. I believe we will challenge. I am sure the manager will buy players who he believes can push us on to the next level.”
Those hopes of kicking on after the heartbreaking near-miss were fatally hampered during the summer when Suarez was sold to Barcelona for £75m after another biting incident while on international duty for Uruguay during the World Cup in Brazil, with Rodgers’ attempts to replace him with Barcelona’s Alexis Sanchez being scotched by the Chilean forward’s wife’s preference to live in London which saw him instead for Arsenal, the Reds eventually ending up with Mario Balotelli and Rickie Lambert.
Sturridge began the season well, scoring a late winner against Southampton on the opening day and impressing alongside Balotelli in a 3-0 win at Spurs soon afterwards, but thigh and muscle injuries torpedoed his campaign and only allowed him to make twelve league appearances before the need for a hip operation in America brought his campaign to a premature conclusion as Rodgers’ men proved unable to shake off their title near-miss hangover, going out of the Champions League in the group stages, suffering FA Cup semi-final defeat to relegation-threatened Aston Villa and, having long since given up hopes of a top-four finish, being humiliated 6-1 at Stoke City on the final day of the season in Steven Gerrard’s last match for the club.
Rodgers was on the brink by the time Sturridge was fit to return to action the following September and he scored twice against Aston Villa in what proved to be the Northern Irishman’s final league game at Anfield before he was sacked and replaced by Jurgen Klopp. The German coach would soon experience the same kind of frustration caused by Sturridge’s injuries as his predecessors with a knee injury picked up in training meaning it would be over a month before the new manager had the England striker at his disposal. And when Sturridge reported a sore foot hours before what was likely to be his first appearance under the new regime against Bordeaux in the Europa League, Klopp questioned Sturridge’s willingness to put his body on the line.
“I have not been that long here but I understand why everyone is waiting”, Klopp said. “We have to accept the situation which is Daniel has been very often injured in the last months and years. It is normal that when you get back in training for this to happen. If it wasn’t for Daniel’s quality no one would think about him being back on the pitch after such a short time. What you need in times like this is training. Your body has to learn new intensity of training and you have to learn what is serious pain or what is only pain. Of course everyone wants him back on the pitch. The training for him was intensive, how it should be, and then we had some new things to talk about. We had to make an assessment and that is what we did. Now we can say it’s not that serious but he still can’t go on as before. That’s completely normal after a long injury. If you think since last season he has only been able to play these three games, one against Aston Villa in which he scored two goals, and two others. Last season, he had the surgery; it has been a really long period out now we have to stay patient I am sorry to say. Sorry for me, sorry for you, sorry for him, but that’s the situation.”
Sturridge scored twice in his first appearance under Klopp, a 6-1 League Cup quarter-final win at Southampton, and - after a hamstring injury kept him out for a further six weeks over Christmas and New Year - earned himself starting slots for the League Cup final defeat on penalties to Manchester City and both legs of the Europa League last-16 clash against Manchester United in which he opened the scoring in Liverpool's 3-1 aggregate victory from the penalty spot. He found himself behind Divock Origi in the pecking order by the time Klopp’s men faced his old club Borussia Dortmund in the quarter-finals but came off the bench to have a hand in Dejan Lovren’s dramatic stoppage time winner which took the Reds into the last four and, after a horror tackle by Everton’s Ramires Funes Mori brought Origi’s season to a premature end, Sturridge scored the crucial goal in the semi-final against Villarreal as Liverpool overturned the Spaniards’ first leg lead to reach the final where he opened the scoring against Sevilla in Basel with one of the great cup final goals, curling home a barely-believable strike with the outside of his left foot, before Unai Emery's Europa League specialists hit back after the break to win.
13 goals in 24 games during 2015/16 had shown Klopp what Sturridge was capable of if he was able to stay fit but a hip injury the week before the German’s first full season in charge began, coupled with the arrival of £30m forward Sadio Mane from Southampton who along with Brazilian Roberto Firmino - one of the final additions of Rodgers’ reign - were proving to be more reliable options and an even more frustrating campaign followed for the Birmingham-born forward - who was still yet to turn 28 - with only 27 appearances in all competitions and seven goals, the final one of them being a crucial and cooly-taken opener at West Ham to help achieve the pre-season objective of Champions League qualification.
The arrival of £36m Mohamed Salah from AS Roma that summer was always likely to further limit Sturridge’s chances and when he departed on loan to West Bromwich Albion in January 2018, it seemed his Liverpool career was done and dusted especially when injuries hit again and the Baggies were relegated with the Birmingham-born forward having failed to score a goal in his six months at the Hawthorns which saw him only start two league games. But he was to be afforded the swan song his efforts and misfortune deserved after returning to Melwood for pre-season and convincing Klopp he was still worthy of a place in the squad.
A goal with his first touch after coming on as a substitute in the opening day win over West Ham was followed by heading home at the Kop end the opening goal of Liverpool’s ultimately victorious Champions League campaign against Paris Saint Germain in his first start of the season and ten days later came off the bench to curl home a stunning last-minute equaliser away to his old club Chelsea that kept the Reds’ unbeaten start (which would stretch to the following January) intact. That was the 160th and final goal of his Liverpool career and, while 20 of his 27 appearances were from the bench during 2018/19, the last one of them was in the closing stages of the epic Champions League semi-final fightback from three goals down against Barcelona as he helped his team-mates see out the agonising final minutes to reach the Madrid final where, even though not making it on the pitch, his well-earned medal made him the first English player to win the trophy with two different clubs. His six-and-a-half years at Anfield came to a close weeks later when he signed for Turkish club Trabzonspor but his time there was hampered by a four-month worldwide ban for breaching betting rules and his playing days finished with a spell at Perth Glory in Australia.
For many observers, Sturridge’s perceived inability to play through his injuries compromised his unquestionable footballing ability and scoring prowess but he refuted suggestions he wasn’t mentally strong enough to power through.
“I don't pay any attention to it whatsoever. The majority, probably 95 per cent of the people who talk and say things about me, don't actually know me. Even some of the people who've played with me don't actually know me. Because they're a team-mate, doesn't necessarily mean we're friends or we talk outside of work. And for people to say, ‘Oh he don't try enough or he doesn't want to be fit’… do you honestly believe I'd want to just be sat down picking up wages when I've dreamt of being a professional footballer ever since I can remember?”
And, despite questioning early on his ability to distinguish real pain when it came to injuries, the tribute Jurgen Klopp paid to Sturridge when he left Anfield showed he was in doubt those frustrations should not be allowed to overshadow the forward’s overall contribution during his time on Merseyside.
“Daniel has earned the right to be considered a modern-day Liverpool great, I would think,” Klopp said. “He came to the club while we were trying to rebuild and re-establish ourselves. Some of the goals he has scored for Liverpool were so, so, so important. He is one of the best finishers I have ever seen in my life. He scores goals you think could and should not be possible. Like many players in my squad, Daniel has had to be patient and contribute when asked during games, but even this season he has played a vital role. What maybe is missed on the outside of the club by many is what a great leader Daniel is in our dressing room. He is smart, confident and not afraid to speak up when he thinks there is something that needs adapting to help the team. He has been great with many of the younger players also so he has been so important to our progression here.”
