This gets spoken about quite a lot on here and it annoys me. A lot of people quite often remind us that Jürgen hasn't had a fit Sturridge to play but forget that Brendan didn't either. If anything I feel more sorry for Brendan when it comes to Sturridge. Sturridge was unfit when Klopp arrived here so Jürgen should have prepared and planned without him. Brendan on the other hand relied on Danny but he was struck down with injury almost overnight.
Brendan went from having the leagues two best strikers to having Balotelli who he didn't even want. Those who were against Brendan never excused our results on Sturridge being unfit and constantly criticised Brendan for not getting the best out of Mario instead or for not signing a forward in January.
To be fair (to me
) I literally just said that in that post..
I firmly believe that had Sturridge been fit under Rodgers that we would have been in a different position.
You only have to look at the end product in one match this season under Brendan as a yardstick, Villa at home, Sturridge fit, cutting edge, quality in the final third.. We win the game.
Sturridge is of that quality that he would make the difference to any side in the league if he could stay fit.
Jürgen didn't sign a forward in January either. But nobody says anything about that and instead we blame the owners or for Sturridge being unfit? Seems a load of bollocks to me.
Fact is that if both managers had a fit Daniel Sturridge in their team then both managers would win the vast majority of their matches. Daniel is that good of a player and can transform any side. But it can't be one rule for Jürgen and another for Brendan. Neither manager had Sturridge available to them.
I can't talk for others on this as I don't know the background but in terms of January we can only guess and can't really have an informed decision.
My view is that Klopp has plans for the summer and wants to implement them then, that signing someone now when he has his eye on something else in the summer wouldn't be right, it may have altered his budgets for the summer too, so he's decided to work with what he has and make an informed decision on them and see where we are then.
The Texiera deal was in place but at a value and seemingly that was Klopp's valuation of him and he didn't want to go higher.
If a summer target had been available now he may well have signed him but they probably weren't, so what's the point in signing a makeshift for 6 months that alters any long term restructure?
I'm not blaming anybody for January, my view is that bringing in a manager mid season always leads to this type of upheaval as he needs time to evaluate what he has.
Mate we aren't far apart with the seems of things, I supported Brendan until he went, fully, however I did feel it was time for a change, but in an ideal world I would have done that in the summer and not have a half way transitional season we are witnessing.
I'm not saying we couldn't have done better either, I think we could of course, but I could see what Rodgers couldn't control and gave him leeway on that, and I'm doing the same under Klopp..
However or whatever we put it down to since he has been here he has been without near on all his best attacking threats, Sturridge, Coutinho, Ings, Origi.. His captain is playing injured, he lost all cbs at one point.. For me those are mitigating circumstances for a stuttering start..
And I did give the benefit to Rodgers as well.
Good post though yours like