Brendan Rodgers has to sure that Liverpool avoid relying on the 19 year old
The injury to Daniel Sturridge has affected Liverpool in more ways than one. Not only do we miss his presence and influence on the field, but the pressure that he would normally be expected to carry has been pawned off on other players in his absence. One player in particular has been saddled with this pressure and expectation above all others.
Raheem Sterling.
The 19 year old wonder kid is now recognised widely as Liverpool’s best player in Sturridge’s absence. This reputation for both club and country has seen him burdened with such a status, and right now his performances are suffering for it.
I don’t mean to say he’s been crushed under the weight of this expectation – far from it, he seems to thrive off it in fact – but I don’t believe he’s been managed particularly well. Rodgers was right to say that Sterling needs protecting this season, particularly as Liverpool have entered another high stakes competition that has made the first half of the league season infinitely more taxing.
Unfortunately, the injury to Sturridge came at a time when Sterling was Liverpool’s only other in-form player and as a result Rodgers has been under pressure to play him in as many games as possible to cope with the loss of his star front man. While Rodgers has stated that Sterling will need to be rested and rotated over the coming months in order to avoid burnout, he hasn’t been afforded the luxury to let that happen. He’s rested him once this season of course, against an in-form Aston Villa side who have a good record at Anfield under Paul Lambert, but it seems like Rodgers chose the wrong game. A better choice was surely to bench him or leave him out entirely against Middlesborough in the League Cup, where he not only started but played the entire 120 minutes and looked knackered at the end of it.
I’m not sure Sterling has recovered since. The whole squad had a bit of an adrenaline boost against Everton – as you would expect – but against Basel Sterling looked exhausted all game, looking slow on the ball and constantly making bad decisions. But Rodgers never substituted him; the whole team played just as poorly, and perhaps the recognition of Sterling as the star forward played into Rodgers’ mind as a reason to leave him on. But instead he took off Coutinho, who I felt had one of his better games this season. He was certainly playing better than Sterling, even if the bar had been set pretty low.
It seems that Sterling needs time to catch his breath. With Sturridge coming back soon he may just get that. Of course the temptation will be to play Sterling as well upon Sturridge’s return, in order to get our two best forward men playing to maximum effect. I just hope Rodgers handles him better than he has this past month.
Sterling is needed right now in a tricky time for Liverpool; but it may be that a tough decision needs to be made to benefit the club in the long term. We’ll have to see what happens.
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hey! Stop all this hype what was his performance against basel? Wasteful in front of goal. Mtcheew!
Its a pity after signing 9 players our average manager depends on overhyped english pet sterling to be his saviour,hahaha,lfc has gone down the drain more since rafa benitez left,beleive it or not,rodgers is not the man for us,i wl comment again by may when you all might have woken up from your slumbers.#RODGERSOUT open your eyes kops and know he is an average and overhyped manager like most english managers.
Im ready to defend and give you a 100reasons why he deserves the sack,i have a thorough analysis on the whole issue.07064817226,benitez a born and bred liverpool faithful in nigeria.
Benitez I think u’re clueless and hp u’ll swallow ur words come may. YNWA
I can’t help but noticed that Benitez had a point. I had refrain from posting a comment for a very long time as many BR supporters here, with all their delusion thinks that BR would come good and should be given more time.
The FACT is plain for all to see, Rafa was a winner even BEFORE he come to LFC, winning the La Liga and in the process breaking the duopoly of Real and Barca, no mean feat indeeed. For all the hype of last season, we won nothing. We were challenging only because of the superb form of Suarez and Sturridge and BR did not sign Suarez. In fact we could say BR lost us the title due to his tactical stupidity (think Chelsea and Palace games) and not the players, especially not Gerrard. This season without Suarez, BR’s con is exposed, our defense is none the better despite new additions and he actually got rid of Agger, despite him comfortable with the ball.
Despite BR guarantee that we would not do a Spurs, this is exactly what we did, 100mil spent and we had regressed.
Our rival MU, despite their early troubles, actually got a real manager (one that is not afraid of heights) and actually bought players that is world class (think Falcao). BR got us a maverick Italian whose greatest achiement so far is that he actually have yet to get sent off ! I can’t help notice how BR keeps highlighting that he is value for money at 16 mill and not how he could replace Suarez’s goals.
Want to chage my opinion of BR, simple, BR must win some titles and challange for the league consistently.
@Captain Awesome, i hope to swallow my words come May but i doubt it.