Brendan Rodgers says he is unconcerned by Daniel Sturridge’s absence from the latest England squad, whilst Roy Hodgson has looked to play down any talk of a club vs country row.
Sturridge has not played for Liverpool since injuring his thigh during training with the England side in early September, and Brendan Rodgers made it clear he did not want the 25-year-old being selected for the next round of Euro qualifiers.
Hodgson has since left Sturridge out of his squad, something that Rodgers says is not his concern.
“I’ve not spoken to Daniel (about the situation). My focus is on Liverpool, it is not on England,” Rodgers said.
“I spoke to him about being available for Liverpool but I can’t think about England when he is not ready to play for Liverpool. He’s had a grade one injury for four weeks, which is a long time, and my focus is now getting him to play for Liverpool.
“I’ve had good communication with Roy. It was amicable. There is no issue. We spoke at length yesterday on the situation and I said to him ‘Every individual player is different’.
“I respect he had work to do internationally but my thoughts are with Liverpool players and what their needs are. We agreed it was probably too soon for Daniel to meet up with England, irrespective of whether he was involved this weekend or not.
“He hasn’t trained with the team at all since the injury with them and it was probably not the right time to go with them.”
Whilst Rodgers insists he has no issue with the England boss, he refused to be drawn on whether the Liverpool and England medical staff were at odds with each other over the situation.
“It is not something to be discussed now,” he continued.
“I don’t think the same thing will happen again. From the conversations with Roy they will obviously look at that.
“I understand his position where he has only a few days to work with the players and he will probably take away that intensity on that second day but you can still work players, we work players here on the second day, but it needs to be tapered to the individual player.”
Hodgson meanwhile, was keen to play down any talk of a falling out with the Liverpool boss.
“No, there’s been no question of manoeuvring on our part or Liverpool’s part.
“It’s just simply a fact, an unfortunate fact, that he’s not recovered. It’s a great blow to us, Liverpool and the player, because he was anxious to be a part of these two games. There’s no problems or conflict there at all.
“He’s not played for Liverpool at all since picking up the injury with us. As I understand it he’s still got some work to do before he’s fully fit. There was no question of him being selected.”
Hodgson also defended his management of Sturridge after Rodgers’ claim that the injury was a result of England not following Liverpool’s training schedule.
“The last thing you want is to get injuries in training, even more so as an international manager because you feel a responsibility to the clubs,” he added.
“People need to consider that we have such a shortage of time. On this particular occasion we had two days and two training sessions to try and hone a very different way of playing.
“If I’m going to be put under pressure as the England manager in future to give every player two days off every time they play, then we won’t train at all quite frankly.”
