Resurgent Sturridge rises for club and country

NOW leading the line for England under Roy Hodgson, the last ten months have marked an incredible turn around for our top scorer Daniel Sturridge. Injured and already out of favour at Chelsea, Sturridge has exploded into life after his January transfer to Anfield and has already amassed 19 Liverpool goals in just 25 matches.

He lead the line for England with Rooney just behind him against Montenegro and notched his first goal for his country with a nonchalant penalty that he won himself in injury time after beating his man with some pace and trickery.

Whilst Sturridge is nowhere near perfect and has some annoying habits (such as keeping hold of the ball for too long on occasion) he has developed a lot at Liverpool, and Brendan Rodgers deserves a lot of praise for this. The biggest thing that he has done is getting his head up. He is still occasionally greedy but is far more likely to look up and pick out a team mate in a better position. You can evidence this as recently as Sunderland away, when he set up Suarez for his two goals after unselfishly picking him out.

As I say, he does sometimes still shoot from tight angles but such as his confidence at how his season is going to date, that’s understandable even if it is frustrating. Whilst I have very little interest in international football as a rule and prefer to see our players not selected (such as Henderson, which is inexplicable but what do you expect of Roy Hodgson?) I am actually happy to see Sturridge play. Strikers like to score goals at all levels and if it continues his confidence and his sharpness in front of goal then I’m all for it.

And being selected for England must be good for his confidence. After a stop start period in his career, you just finally feel that he “belongs” somewhere and it has done wonders for him. He is very much first choice at Liverpool and it tells in his play. His body language is positive and he clearly enjoys playing with his team mates. It’s all come good for Sturridge at the right time. This has worked out brilliantly for Liverpool and again, Rodgers deserves the credit for taking the decision to sign him and then selecting a team to get the best out of him.

And at such a young age, I think that the best is yet to come from Daniel Sturridge. He’s playing for his club and has now broken through into his country’s set up and is still nowhere near his peak. Of course, he needs to shake off his niggling injuries (and whose heart isn’t in mouth when an international weekend is upon us?) but a look at his goalscoring record tells you everything you need to know about how successful he is for us.

Ultimately that’s all that matters to me – the fact he is currently leading the line for England is just an added bonus as far as I’m concerned. But let us hope that he doesn’t get into Roy Hodgson’s mind numbing negativity too much!