Brendan Rodgers has lavished praise on young Liverpool midfielder Raheem Sterling after the England international scored two and assisted one in today’s 3-2 win over Norwich.

“He is the best young player in European football at the moment,” Rodgers said.

“At 19 years of age you don’t see anyone better. His intelligence with the ball, his movement and he’s scoring goals. His first goal was a wonderful strike. He’s just shifted it, got his shot off; to beat a goalkeeper of John Ruddy’s quality shows you the quality of the strike.

“His pass for Luis’ goal was like a top midfield player, so there’s an assist, and his position for the counter attack when he broke away and obviously gets a bit of luck on the deflection but his overall performance he’s shown so much maturity.”

Rodgers also spoke about how he raised his team before the important game following an emotional week.

He said: “We’ve come off the back of the week where we held the memorial service for Hillsborough. We used Margaret Aspinall (chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group), one of her quotes she made on the day as a real motivation for us going into the game and real encouragement for us and the players are helping themselves.

“They’re winning games and they are very hungry. We have qualified for the Champions League. That was the objective and we can finish no lower than third which is an incedible achievement for the team and the squad.”





