Is Daniel Sturridge Destined to Become Liverpool's Chief Bridesmaid?

Rare is it a manager concedes to having reservations about a new signing. Most could make a McDonald's burger sound like a Wagyu steak and regularly do. Prescience only ever tends to be applicable when a transfer proves a hit.

Looking back, then, at Brendan Rodgers' assessment of Liverpool's acquisition of Daniel Sturridge from Chelsea in January 2013, it's refreshing how candid he was having just spent £12 million of someone else's money.

"He has got quality. If he wants to stay at this level, this is probably his last chance," Rodgers said at the time, per the Telegraph. "The biggest thing is hunger. We are bringing in a player who knows he has to perform as he will be playing with one of the biggest clubs in the world."

As opening gambits go, Rodgers' starter for 10 is like beginning a wedding speech with, "She's been around a bit, but if she puts the graft in, there's every chance we could have a half-decent marriage. No promises, mind. To Daniel!"

In reply, the player's first musing over the move was a passive aggressive reminder that he'd be happy to play anywhere, but centre-forward is his best position. A bit like a restaurant critic telling a maitre d' they're happy to sit anywhere, just so long as it's the best table in the restaurant.

Both sides are still muttering the same things nearly four years on.

Sturridge was drinking in the last-chance saloon as a 23-year-old and is still propping up the bar now. Yet this is not a common tale of unfulfilled potential. It's worth remembering that, in the post-war era, only Fernando Torres, Roger Hunt and Albert Stubbins (presumably on day release from a George Orwell novel) reached 50 goals for Liverpool quicker.

When he's fit, Liverpool have a £30 million-plus striker acquired for £12 million. He is by and large the player we all hoped he would become, and it's still not enough. This is a rare case when it's quantity not quality that's the problem.

"

Sturridge, 27, scores his 70th Premier League goal (44 for Liverpool). Lukaku also has 70 Premier League goals (53 for Everton). He's 23.

— Mat (@dinosaurblue) December 27, 2016"

J.D. Salinger published his only novel, The Catcher in the Rye, in 1951—his publishers were waiting for its sequel when he died in 2010, aged 91. Let's just hope Liverpool's 2013-14 season doesn't prove to be Sturridge's magnum opus. There's a little of the Holden Caulfield about Sturridge. 

To compare how Sturridge has fared in comparison to Luis Suarez since the pair were spearheading Liverpool's title tilt in 2013-14 may seem disingenuous, but at the time, the Englishman was only nominally the junior partner.

Despite missing the whole of December through injury, Sturridge still managed 24 goals (21 in the league) in 30 starts to Suarez's 31 strikes. Sturridge looked capable then of becoming one of the best players in the world. 

Since leaving Liverpool in the summer of 2014, Suarez has played 8,599 minutes for Barcelona in La Liga and the Champions League and scored 85 goals. Sturridge has managed 17 goals in 3,024 minutes of Premier League and European fare. The Liverpool man could give Carlos Tevez a run for his money in terms of how much he has earned per minute played.

Sturridge is no Suarez, but he's far too fetching a footballer to have his best years behind him already. His goals-per-game ratio is still remarkably good, it's just his games-per-season record that is off.

With an almost ethereal grace, it can look as though he's skating on an ice rink, while everyone else on the pitch is trudging through wet sand. Head up and with a straight back, he's a lovely mover, arm semi-permanently out, shielding possession as if chivalrously guiding a girlfriend past street hoodlums.

A can opener of a left foot caresses the ball with the care and attention of an overly fussy mother delivering offspring to the school gate, both equally reluctant to let go of their prized possession.

Sturridge probably hoped at the midway mark of his fourth season at Liverpool, at 27, fielding questions over his hunger would be a thing of the past. 

When in November last year Jurgen Klopp said Sturridge needed to learn "what is serious pain or what is only pain," it effectively legitimised further questioning of the player's mentality—long since suspected of being less than Herculean. Legs of Serrano ham in a charcuterie window have been hung out to dry less.

In 2014, Vice magazine's always entertaining Clive Martin christened Sturridge football's only hipster and "the Kanye West of the Northwest." A devout Christian in Yeezys who hangs around with Drake and has an interest in high-end fashion, it's fair to say Sturridge is not your typical footballer. He's probably not even got any Phil Collins albums. The game's gone.

It's hard to think of a player who is put on the (cod) psychiatrist's couch more often. The seats in the new Main Stand at Anfield should have been reclining and upholstered in brown leather.

Sturridge missed 40 of 58 matches in Rodgers' final full season at Liverpool because of calf, thigh and hip problems. Last term was barely better as he made just 11 Premier League starts under first Rodgers and then Klopp. In the current campaign, he has made the starting XI in four of Liverpool's 18 league matches.

It's a measure of just how good he is that Liverpool persevere with him. It's not altruism on the club's part that has seen him stick around when so often blighted by injury.

If Sturridge had been one of Bill Shankly's charges, he'd have been banished from the training ground, probably forced to wear a bell to warn others of his impending sickliness. The Scot loved his players but had a cold heart when it came to injured parties. 

This season is different to the others in that even when fully fit and on song, perhaps for the first time, there will still be a huge question mark over whether he should be first choice. His last start in the league was in Liverpool's stagnant goalless draw with Manchester United at Anfield back in October. The home side improved markedly when Adam Lallana replaced him in the second half.

His assist for the winner in the Merseyside derby after coming off the substitutes' bench against Everton was his first involvement for a month, after what was first diagnosed as a tight calf muscle kept him out for five matches.

At best, he is fourth choice for one of the three forward positions in Klopp's XI. Many would make a case for Divock Origi being ahead of him in the pecking order, too. The photos of Sturridge's face after Origi was brought on before him at Tottenham Hotspur at the start of the season launched a thousand caption competitions. Including his own on Instagram, to his eternal credit. 

If reported target Jese Rodriguez, or any other forward who has been linked, arrives from Paris Saint-Germain, it would be difficult to see a future for Sturridge on Merseyside unless Everton boss Ronald Koeman is a fan. 

Klopp wants his forwards to be stormtroopers in the way they swarm en masse with military precision, whereas Sturridge is more of a shuffler when it comes to closing down. In wins against Chelsea and Leicester City, he put in selfless shifts, but there's always a suspicion he might stop to look at some vinyl outside a charity shop en route to harassing an opposition full-back out of possession. Even if he unearths some heavy metal, Klopp is unlikely to be impressed.

In the past week, the ghosts of Christmas captains past and present have visited him. Prior to Sturridge breaking a Premier League goal drought that went as far back as April with Liverpool's fourth against Stoke City, Jordan Henderson said, per Sky Sports: "I'm lucky I play with him for both club and country and I personally don't think there's a better English centre-forward."

Steven Gerrard, in a Q&A with the Liverpool Echo, put a metaphorical arm around his former team-mate and gave it a little squeeze, too: "In terms of natural ability, Sturridge is up there with the rest of them.

"He's so sharp and can get his shot off, as we saw against Everton last week. I don't think sometimes he realises how good he is."

If on New Year's Eve night his dreams are interrupted by either West Ham United skipper Mark Noble or Stoke counterpart Ryan Shawcross, expect him to wake up in a cold sweat fearing they might be the ghosts of Christmas captains yet to come. Both clubs are purportedly interested. Surely he's a class above either?

Liverpool might not sell to a rival, but there's a case to say he would be in or around the first XI of any of the top six.

Gerrard has history in quietly cajoling Sturridge. In his autobiography, My Story, he tells an illuminating tale of convincing him to start a match against Manchester United in September 2013, despite the player's reservations over risking a thigh injury. Liverpool were already without Suarez, who was partway through a 10-match suspension for biting Chelsea defender Branislav Ivanovic.

Having had a word with the club's medical staff and ascertaining it was not a serious problem, Liverpool's captain had a quiet chat with the striker during the pre-match walk. Sturridge started and scored the game's only goal. It bodes well for Gerrard's managerial ambitions. 

"Daniel is one of those people you have to boost sometimes with a 'C'mon, you're our main man. We need you—so just got for it'," wrote Gerrard. "You never needed to say that to Luis (Suarez). Our hunch had paid off—and all my pleading during that long 15-minute walk with Daniel seemed worth it."

In his column for the Daily Mail, Jamie Carragher echoed Gerrard's sentiment with regards Sturridge's need to be 100 per cent right before committing to playing.

"The one thing I remember most of all from being his team-mate is that he had to feel 100 per cent right mentally and physically in order to play.

"The thing is, with professional football, it's not often any player will take to the field 100 per cent fit. There is always a knock or something niggling and when that is the case, you just grit your teeth and get through it."

In Sturridge's defence, in an interview with the Mail on Sunday's Rob Draper in April, he gave short shrift to anyone questioning his professionalism or desire to play every week. For someone who has been accused of being mentally fragile, he's no wallflower when it comes to voicing his opinion:

"

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?

"

His goal against Stoke was the 100th Liverpool have scored in little over 14 months of Klopp's tenure. Sturridge is responsible for just seven of them, which begs the question: Do Liverpool need him if he can't stay fit?

Some 45 Premier League goals have been plundered already this season, with Sturridge's barren run barely noticed as Sadio Mane, Roberto Firmino, Philippe Coutinho, Origi, Lallana and James Milner have all pitched in impressively to share the burden.

If Chelsea rely on Diego Costa for the bulk of their goals—in the same way Manchester United do Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Arsenal do Alexis Sanchez, Manchester City do Sergio Aguero and Tottenham do Harry Kane—there is no such issue of Liverpool being beholden to a single goalscorer.

With Coutinho ruled out of the much-anticipated New Year's Eve fixture between Liverpool and Manchester City, Sturridge will compete with Origi for the final forward berth in a three alongside Firmino and Mane.

After the Stoke win, Sturridge told Sky Sports: "It's a team game at the end of the day. Everyone is going to be needed in the squad. I've not had any issues or problems within the camp.

"I'm enjoying my football and when I get my minutes I focus myself and if I'm not in the team I stay positive and give my input when I can."

He wants to make it work at Liverpool, and the club's supporters still clearly hold a candle for him. Whether Klopp is as convinced is less certain.  

When the floodlights are dimmed on the final Premier League match of the calendar year, it is expected either of Liverpool or Manchester City, perhaps even both, will have underlined their title credentials.

For Sturridge, it could prove to be the tipping point in his Anfield career.

All stats provided by WhoScored.com unless otherwise stated