Rumour Mongering: Sturridge Returns to Training, So Naturally He Wants Out of Liverpool

If you repeat a story enough times, does it become true?

Daniel Sturridge returned to full training with the rest of the Liverpool senior squad on Thursday. By Thursday evening he was, according to multiple sources, absolutely interested in a summer transfer away from Liverpool Football Club because of an alleged displeasure in how his unfortunate injury history has been positioned to the public by his club.

The Mirror, the Telegraph, and a handful of other outlets ran with the story despite it having no apparent origin. Both cited Jürgen Klopp's statements from late last year suggesting that Sturridge needed to "learn what is serious pain and what is only pain" as the sole example of poor positioning of Sturridge's situation by the club, and failed to offer any kind of source for Sturridge's own desire for departure, not even from a generic "close friend" of the player let alone something more substantial.

It's a story that was bound to pop up sooner or later, of course. "Sturridge to leave in the summer!" was inevitable after a winter transfer window spent alternating between rumours of Liverpool being willing to listen to offers for Sturridge's services at £25m and rumours of a nonsensical bid-turned-loan-deal from West Ham United. The rumour mill has had its fun with the club's side of things, so now it's time for the rumours to emerge from the player's perspective.

None of this is to say that it's absolutely impossible for there to be any truth to this. It's very possible Sturridge feels slighted by the club in spite of them standing by him for two years and Klopp giving him a mid-season "pre-season" training period, just like it was very possible the club were willing to listen to offers for at a certain price. But mathematical possibility isn't the same as probability and we'll need a little more heft to this story before believing it's anything other than the work of bored sports writers at a slow news desk.