Is Daniel Sturridge the solution to Liverpool's biggest problem?

On the one hand, Daniel Sturridge’s outing against West Ham on Sunday – which comprised 87 minutes played, one goal expertly taken and one performance of general all-round predatory menace – showed us nothing new whatsoever. The predatory menace and the goals have long since come to be expected whenever Sturridge takes to a football pitch, and when he happened upon his first proper chance, it was little surprise to anyone that the ball was promptly dispatched into the back of the net.

On the other hand, though, Sturridge’s re-emergence hints at the complexities that still lie within a situation that many have long since seen as a foregone conclusion. Sturridge’s Liverpool future has, for the past few months, been commonly assumed to be drawing to its close, the player’s fitness issues and physical limitations supposedly at odds with the exacting requirements of his coach. The argument runs that even when Sturridge does make it on to the pitch, his instincts run counter to the multifaceted, self-sacrificing model of centre-forward that Jurgen Klopp needs. That Sturridge’s excellence, in short, comes at the detriment to his team.

It’s an argument that makes a good deal of sense in theory, but a whole lot less in practice, not least when Sturridge’s first start for four and a half months coincides with his team’s most impressive performance for some time, and their most expansive away display of the entire season.

Prior to Sunday, Liverpool had been stumbling towards the finish line with the ill-suited MO of ‘winning ugly’, struggling badly for goals and largely devoid of attacking inspiration. And then, with Sturridge reinstalled up front, Liverpool looked reborn, shredding an obdurate defence with ease and glowing with the sort of impudence and swagger that had them as title challengers going into the new year. Suddenly, a Jurgen Klopp team spearheaded by Daniel Sturridge seems less an awkward contradiction, more a glorious extravagance.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of viewing a broad issue through the narrow lens of the latest result. Yet at the same time it’s hard not to see Sunday’s game as a reminder that if Liverpool do choose to sell Sturridge this summer, they will be willingly ridding themselves of football’s most prized commodity: an elite-level goal-scorer.

Big clubs tend not to make a habit of doing that, and on the rare occasions that they do the chips can fall both ways. Alex Ferguson’s decision to sell Ruud van Nistelrooy, for instance, thrust the young pair of Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo to centre-stage and led directly to the advent of his final great side. Rafa Benitez’s sale of Michael Owen paved the way for the most competitive period in Liverpool’s modern history.

But as alluring as the idea of an improved collective can seem, the team isn’t always better off without the poacher. Gerard Houllier sold Robbie Fowler on the back of a treble season that should have ushered in Liverpool’s return to their domestic perch, yet the only other trophy he went on to win was the League Cup and three years later he was ushered out the back door, his relationship with the fans having never properly recovered. Ferguson’s offloading of Carlos Tevez was a pivotal moment in Manchester’s cross-town power shift. Less obviously, a decision such as Manchester City’s to sell Edin Dzeko – since when the Bosnian has scored 47 goals and counting over two seasons during which City have won regressed starkly – is similarly instructive.

Fitness issues aside, much of the case against keeping Sturridge lies in the idea that his specialism is something that Liverpool have plenty of already. And it’s certainly true that the team’s goals-for column gives the impression of a side for whom scoring comes easily enough, but that argument works only up to a point: the reality is that goals are precisely what Liverpool have been desperately lacking in recent weeks, and Sturridge delivered them when the pressure was on.

And for all the talk of Sturridge being a player who takes the shine away from his team-mates, on Sunday he helped bring the best out of Liverpool’s star player, Philippe Coutinho’s brace of goals and hot-knife-through-butter assist owing much to the livewire movement of his centre-forward. While there is clearly a natural understanding in the way Coutinho links with Roberto Firmino when the two play together, it is Sturridge’s instincts – namely the darting runs in behind – that seem to play more basely to the playmaker’s strengths.

One impressive game from Sturridge does not change the fact that Liverpool’s very best performances under Klopp have come with the scurrying presence of Firmino up front. It is hard to envisage all three players in the same team without a least one being heavily compromised. But over the course of a 60-game season, there is surely ample room for them in the same squad.

There is also a horses-for-courses factor at play here: Firmino’s hard-running style works a treat against high-class opposition, in the games when Klopp’s counterpressing blueprint is at its most thrillingly effective. But the same methods tend to look rather toothless against the lesser teams, who sit deep, relinquish possession and leave the onus to attack on Liverpool. Perhaps not coincidentally, Sturridge’s return on Sunday marked the first time since December that Liverpool have beaten a bottom-half team by more than one goal.

It’s been the puzzle of Liverpool’s season: how to come up with the formula to overcome low-grade opponents without redrawing the blueprint that has got them toppling the division’s heavyweights. If Sunday showed us anything new, it’s that perhaps the answer has been there all along.