Jamie Carragher knows that if you dish it out, you’ve got to be able to take it too.
Jamie Carragher has described a recent, difficult conversation with Liverpool striker Daniel Sturridge during the post-season trip to Australia.
Carragher was travelling with the Liverpool squad as one of four Liverpool ‘legends’, and noticed that Sturridge was not his usual self.
The pair finally had words in the immediate aftermath of the clash with Sydney FC.
“I’ve got a funny story about that, and I didn’t mind it actually – I was happy about it,” Carragher is reported to have said in the Mirror.
“As soon as I got on the plane, I could see Sturridge wasn’t his normal self with me. And he pulled me in Australia after the game, or at half-time when we’d come off.
“He said ‘why did you say they should sell me?’.
“I said ‘ooh, fair enough!’ I thought ‘I’m not having you putting me on the back foot’ so I went straight back and said ‘well, what else can they do?!’
“He wasn’t too happy that I’d said that, but my point was that a player of his quality, you either play or you go. If I was him, I wouldn’t want to be on the bench, and from Klopp’s point of view there is nobody else on the bench he could get money for, if he needed say £20m or £25m.”
Carragher felt that Sturridge had every right to confront him, as the media are often protected from dealing with players they’ve publicly criticised.
“I was happy he said it. It’s fair enough; we give stick out, and plenty of praise too, so who are we to say that someone can’t have an opinion on us?
“He didn’t come across like a player who was looking to get out, I have to say that!
“I played with him. He’s always had that thing about him that he’s moody or difficult. I never saw it.
“He was quiet but no different to a lot of other players. The big thing was getting him on the training pitch every day. It’s well-documented that he’s got to be 100 per cent and that he’s fearing his body is going to let him down.
“But as soon as you get him on the pitch, you can tell straight away. You can just tell with the way he controls the ball, the way he moves, you know you’ve signed a good player.
“When he first came, he could work the channels with his pace and power. I just don’t see him do that now. I remember in the final in Basel late on, he chased a ball in the corner and a defender just ran past him.
“He maybe can’t do it, or he’s looking after an injury. But what he can still do is be electric around the box. You think of Defoe, what he’s done the last three or four years. He doesn’t run everywhere but he’s still electric in the box, and that’s what Sturridge will still have; quick feet in the box, get a shot off quick, be sharp, he’ll always have that.”
