Stop Me if You've Heard This One: Daniel Sturridge Injured Again

Isaac Newton's relatively obscure Fourth Law of Motion states that if Daniel Sturridge is moving towards a return to regular playing time, there will also be an injury moving directly towards him arriving just in time to ensure he never steps foot on the pitch. Sturridge had made the bench last weekend against Manchester City, but was a last minute scratch from the line up on Thursday against Bordeaux after picking up a foot injury ahead of the match.

"I don't know too much about the situation because it was in the afternoon after training," Jürgen Klopp said about his unfortunate striker. "It's not a situation I saw but we trained in two groups, the starting line-up and the other players trained together in shooting.

"Of course we can now start to think about it because we had no time, it was really close to the game when the news came. We had Cameron Brannagan in the hotel with us, 19 (in the squad) in case something happens. No news in this moment, we have to wait."

Sturridge immediately went for a scan to assess the damage. Whether this was simply a completely understandable bit of paranoia on the part of Liverpool's physios or representative of something far more serious remains to be seen, but Sturridge missing another match when he was so close to a return was demoralizing for all involved regardless.

Concerns about Sturridge's long-term viability as Liverpool's main striker were raised as far back as the summer of 2014 when he got injured and Liverpool's back up plan was to sign Mario Balotelli. When the club didn't sign a further back-up striker during the January transfer window, there was hope that Sturridge had turned a corner. Naturally, he got injured again. And then at least three times more since then, with a spot of surgery in the United States sandwiched in between.

With Sturridge's talent and positive attitude, most still hope he can find his way back into a Liverpool side that looks to be shaping up into something exciting under Jürgen Klopp. This latest setback, though possibly minor, seems to make that look more and more unlikely. With no end in sight for Sturridge's injuries, at some point Liverpool's decision makers will need to begin asking themselves the practical — if completely unromantic — questions about how much longer they can reasonably believe Sturridge could be anything other than a heavily rotated option from the bench, if that.