Suso and Sterling feature in first senior game

Young Reds starlets Suso and Raheem Sterling were both given run outs in Liverpool’s 1-0 friendly defeat to Borussia Moenchengladbach yesterday in Germany. Karim Matmour scored the only goal of the game after a mistake from Daniel Ayala, but Hodgson was pleased with the performance:

“We gave it to them again. It’s disappointing. If it had stayed 0-0 I would have been delighted with the performance. I am still quite pleased and I think we got everything we asked from the players. We had three or four World Cup players playing their first 45 or 60 minutes and, of course, at the end of the game we had players who are only 15 and 16 on the field. I thought they stood up to the challenge very well. As in Kaiserslautern, we came close to a really good result. It was an even game but, as I said, unfortunately after 10 minutes with no pressure on us at all, we gave away that very bad goal.”

The Reds were running low on players and Roy decided to draft in both Sterling and Suso into the squad. Responding to their inclusion, Hodgson said:

“We were short of players but as it happened, Aurelio signed at the last minute and Insua decided that he is still undecided about his future and was therefore able to be selected. Suddenly we had 20 players instead of 18. I was concerned in the beginning we wouldn’t have 18 players so Raheem Sterling and Suso were called up and having done so I wanted to give them a few minutes on the pitch.”

Liverpool play their next competitive match against Rabotnicki in the second leg of the Europa League qualifier at Anfield on Thursday. Many of the absentees from the Moenchengladbach match such as Daniel Agger and Martin Skrtel will start against the Macedonian side according to Roy.