He still has pace he's just very economical with it, for the chipped effort against Roma he left the defence for dead. I wonder if it's a confidence thing more than anything, he hasn't looked slow exactly he just hasn't used his pace to run in behind much recently.
Agree with that but I don't think it's a confidence thing. I think confidence is one thing that Sturridge definitely doesn't lack.
My opinion is that when we played under Brendan, Sturridge played off the last defender much, much more than he has in recent times. In the 2013/14 season, for the goals against Arsenal, Everton, and many others, you had Sturridge employing a similar burst of pace to what we saw against Roma but the difference was that he was playing off the last defender and it would get him one-on-one against the goalkeeper as a result. I just haven't seen that from him and from our style of play in general over the last couple of seasons.
Not that it's a bad thing of course and now with the additions of Mane, Wjiji, a fully fit Henderson, maybe it's not even needed that much and Sturridge can be more instrumental in our build-up play as he's quite good in that department as well. And if he can refine the types of movements we saw against Roma, I think we can expect some exciting things from him and the team this year.
