Daniel Sturridge’s career is a somewhat sad one. The striker showed bags of potential and quality earlier in his career. Including in the 2013/14 Premier League season when he scored 22 goals and earned nine assists in 29 league appearances.
However, since then, Sturridge has been plagued with a series of injuries that have prevented him from reaching the form he was on, that season. This has meant Sturridge has been rather out in the cold with current manager Jurgen Klopp.
This is evidenced by the fact that he has made just nine Premier League appearances this season. Most of which have been off the bench. But despite barely playing under Klopp, Sturridge does still show signs of quality when he makes a rare appearance for Liverpool. And even though most of his appearances this season have come from the bench he has still scored two and assisted one for The Reds in the league.
He has also scored one and assisted two in five Champions League appearances this season. All of those appearances were from the bench with the longest lasting just 22 minutes. This shows that despite Sturridge barley starting any games his quality is still somewhat there.
This has lead Sturridge to ask to be loaned out in January. Largely because the World Cup is this summer and he knows that if he is to have any chance of being called up he needs to play consistently and score goals. Liverpool and Klopp have gone along with the striker’s wishes as they have reportedly agreed that he may leave on loan in January to get first-team football.
This then begs the question, who should try to sign Sturridge on loan for the remaindered of the season? One club that springs to mind is Newcastle United. Firstly because given that Mike Ashley is still in charge at Newcastle and the takeover is likely not to be completed before January, Newcastle will probably once again have limited funds to invest in their, let’s face it below average Premier League squad.
This will leave Rafa Benitez with quite a big problem as it is evident Newcastle’s squad needs some serious investment. But he will not have the required money to do so. Therefore, one thing Newcastle can do to get in players to improve their squad is loan players. One of those players should be Daniel Sturridge.
Newcastle are currently sat 18th in the Premier League and are without a league win in nine games. One of the reasons for this is their lack of goals. The Magpies have scored just 16 goals in 18 league games. Plus, their top scorers in the league this season, Dwight Gayle and Joselu have both scored just three each in the league this season. That is simply not good enough at this stage in the season. And if Newcastle wants to stay up, it’s clear they need to bring in another goal scorer.
Granted, Sturridge may be somewhat of a risk as he is injury prone and has not started many games this season. But given Newcastle’s financial restraints Sturridge wouldn’t be a bad signing for them. Especially when you consider that Sturridge has scored as many goals in 14 appearances this season, mostly from the bench, as both of Newcastle’s top scorers in similar games but they had a lot more starts.
A move to Newcastle would also be a decent move for Sturridge. Because he is very likely to start a lot of games for Newcastle. Which is what he needs right now.If he wants to have any chance of making the England World Cup squad. Plus, Newcastle have at times played with two up front this season. Meaning Sturridge would not have to work as hard up front on his own. Which is a good thing for him given his injury problems.
