LIVERPOOL
SADIO MANE terrorised opponents while flirting with a red card, Joel Matip made a composed Premier League debut and James Milner looked surprisingly comfortable at left-back.
Yet after a match Liverpool dominated, but drew, Jurgen Klopp found himself being asked about a player who was on the pitch for two anonymous minutes: Daniel Sturridge.
Klopp, not a manager to hide his feelings, was not best pleased. “Actually, why should I think about something like this?” he said, before explaining that while “Daniel Sturridge is a wonderfully skilful player”, he had picked his forwards based on the Tottenham defence they would face, and their readiness.
Sturridge, he added, had joined pre-season later than the others, who had built up an understanding.
All very logical but Sturridge, by dint of being a prodigiously talented English striker, is one of those players who attracts a lot of attention when he is in the team, and even more when he is not.
Thus Sky Sports devoted an extended period of their post-match analysis to his absence, which boiled down to a view that Mane and Roberto Firmino worked harder – a problem for Sturridge given Klopp demands his players put a shift in.
Graeme Souness went so far as to suggest Sturridge had “a mountain to climb” to be picked for the “big games”. Klopp dissented.
“There’s no big mountain for him,” he said. “It’s a good team, thank God. Hopefully we can make different line-ups for