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There are worse things in the world than being sent to California as a chilly English December starts to creep up on the Premier League, but Daniel Sturridge is unlikely to see it that way. The Liverpool striker has been trapped in a perptual injury/rehabilitation cycle since the end of the summer, and there's likely nothing more that he'd like for Christmas than to be injury free and ready to contribute to his team.
But, of course, things have not gone his way and after his latest setback ensured that he wouldn't return until the end of the month at the earliest, the club decided to send him on to sunny Los Angeles to finish out his recovery period.
"He has gone away to get some specific work in with some of our staff and he is coming along well," Brendan Rodgers said, clarifying that the training is purely to take advantage of the warm weather. European players occasionally get sent to the United States for major medical treatment that they can't get in Europe, but thankfully Sturridge's visit won't involve any reconstructive surgery or other invasive care.
Sturridge is maintaining his usual positive outlook while doing lots of sand-based rehabilitation, documenting everything as per usual on Instagram. Remember, don't count him out because he's got people counting on him.
