Daniel Sturridge Injured In International Duty

Roy Hodgson, the gift that keeps on giving. While it's not obvious that this gets pinned on the English national team manager, playing Daniel Sturridge for 89 minutes in a meaningless friendly only 3 days after his previous game wasn't nice, was it Roy?

At the moment, the severity of the injury is unknown, but we do know it's a thigh injury and it'll keep him out of Monday's qualifier. It's still unknown if Sturridge will miss any Liverpool games, but with his previous injury history its likely that Brendan Rodgers will be sensible and keep him out of the Villa game at least.

It was always likely that Studge would have a couple of spells out this season, one positive here is September isn't the most imposing month on the schedule. The second is this isn't a hamstring injury, as Sturridge has hurt his hamstrings with such regularity it's threatening to match Steven Gerrard's groin for injury history.

Hopefully the Liverpool #15 isn't facing an extended time on the sidelines. If he does miss time, expect to see Liverpool temporarily move away from the diamond and go back to either the 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1. The vastly improved squad depth helps here, Brendan has the option of replacing Studge from the lineup that started against Spurs with Lazar Markovic, Adam Lallana, Emre Can or Philippe Coutinho depending on his preferred formation. Sure sounds a lot better than having to plug in Victor Moses or Iago Aspas. Fabio Borini staying might help as well as he might make the 18-man squad in place of Strurridge.

Oh, and can someone please cover Mario Balotelli in bubble wrap until Villa gets here?