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Liverpool's Man of the Match honours in their League Cup tie against Notts County likely have to go to Daniel Sturridge, with the striker's two goals capping another strong performance for a player who last year struggled to regularly make the bench at Chelsea. The match, though, wasn't put to rest until the 110th minute, when Jordan Henderson's late burst of power and pace gave Liverpool enough breathing room to know the game was won.
"I think it's important for midfielders to chip in with some goals," said Henderson, who has carried his strong form from the second half of last season over into the start of the current campaign and continued to impress on Tuesday evening when he came off the bench to give a sagging Liverpool side a boost of energy in midfield. "If I can do that it will be brilliant, but the most important thing is contributing to the team.
"It was a very important win to keep that momentum going. We've made a good start and another win takes us onto the game against Manchester United. We'll go into that game very confident. We'll recover well from Tuesday night and everybody will be looking forward to the game come Sunday."
Despite his clear impact on the game and suggestions manager Brendan Rodgers might have been resting him with an eye on Sunday's clash against Manchester United, Henderson insisted starts for Joe Allen and Luis Alberto ahead of him in midfield were earned on merit.
"I don't know that I was given a rest," he noted in his post-match interview. "The boys that played deserved to play, they've been brilliant in training."
Regardless of the reasoning behind Rodgers' team selection on Tuesday evening, with Notts County out of the way—albeit at a high cost—few will be expecting anything other than a start for Henderson on the weekend.
"It was a bit of a relief to see the ball hit the back of the net," he added. "I think at 4-2 we knew the game was probably over as there was not long left. We would have liked it to have been a lot more comfortable, but things like that happen in football.
"We've got to go on and learn from it and make sure that if we're in that position again, we see the game out a lot more comfortably."