Raheem Sterling Reaping Rewards of Brendan Rodgers' Role Revision at Liverpool

It’s not been a backlash exactly, but it’s fair to say that after last season’s golden introduction, there have been some doubts about Raheem Sterling this campaign.

There was the ludicrous furore over him admitting that he was tired and being left out of England’s game in Estonia, there’s been the recent fuss about his holiday to Jamaica and there have been major concerns as to whether he is playing too many games for a player of his age.

Certainly, it’s not ideal for a player of 20 to have started 20 Premier League games already this season, as well as starting five Champions League and two League Cup matches and playing regularly for England.

But then there are games such as Tuesday’s Capital One Cup tie against Chelsea—his 36th appearance of the season—when the concerns melt away and there is nothing that can be done other than celebrate a majestic talent.

It’s not a revelation that Chelsea’s back four can be vulnerable to a player running at them with pace, but that doesn’t diminish the value of Sterling’s strike, one of those rapturous goals that feels inevitable well before the shot is unleashed.

And that’s one of the great advantages of Sterling playing as a false nine. He can drop deep, find space, turn and accelerate. And once he’s going, his acceleration is such that he’s very hard to stop.

Last season, Liverpool pioneered the new style of diamond midfield, in which the two centre-forwards split and pull wide to create room for the player at the tip of the diamond to surge into.

That created a dilemma for the opposing central defenders: did they stick with the centre-forwards and risk being pulled wide, or did they leave them to the full-backs and try to deal with the player coming from deep who—if he’d got away from the holding midfielder—would almost certainly already be moving at pace?

Sterling thrived in that central role last season, and West Ham United have used a similar system to turn Stewart Downing into a dangerous player this.

With Luis Suarez sold and Daniel Sturridge injured, though, Brendan Rodgers has had to find a different way of unleashing Sterling this season, particularly after Mario Balotelli proved such a disappointment.

Using him as the central striker in a 3-4-2-1 has a similar effect. The two creative midfielders occupy an unusual position and effectively force the opposition to employ two holding midfielders to cater for them, but if they do that, it should offer room for Sterling to drop into.

Jon Super/Associated Press

Although Liverpool lost their first game in the 3-4-2-1, away at Manchester United, they are unbeaten in nine matches in the formation since.

In part, that’s because the formation offers opponents a problem they are not used to solving. In part, it’s because Jordan Henderson and Lazar Markovic have adapted so well as wing-backs, while the reintroduction of Lucas Leiva has added a measure of midfield solidity. But it’s also largely to do with Sterling being allowed to do what he does best.

He can also play as one of the two, as he did in the away game at Aston Villa, when Fabio Borini played as the central striker and Liverpool won 2-0.

Whatever the concerns about how many games Sterling is playing, it has to be beneficial to his development that having started out as a winger, he has also experienced playing behind a front man and as the most-advanced centre-forward.

There was once a tendency for English players to be one-dimensional and only able to play one position; Sterling is anything but that.

When Sturridge is fit again, of course, that creates an issue as to how best to use him and Sterling together, which might mean Sterling drops deeper.

For now, though, Rodgers is due credit for devising a system that gets the best out of his most effective forward.