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When the final whistle blew, Daniel Sturridge slumped to the turf near the centre circle and sat down hard.

A couple of Arsenal players tried to console him but Sturridge stayed where he was.

In the end, as his team-mates started to drift towards the tunnel, Sturridge dragged himself up and walked towards the Liverpool fans.

He had missed a chance to break a 90-year-old club record after scoring in his eight previous consecutive games.

But it was obvious the loss at the Emirates was hurting him most.

He climbed over the barriers, took off his shirt and handed it to a supporter who had made the long journey down from Merseyside.

Then, with the applause of the away fans ringing in his ears, Sturridge trudged back towards the dressing rooms.

Like most players, Sturridge takes defeats hard. He was similarly bereft when he missed the decisive penalty in Great Britain’s shoot-out in the 2012 Olympics.

Yesterday, he blamed himself for Liverpool’s elimination from the FA Cup after he missed two gilt-edged chances when he was clean through on Lukasz Fabianski.

But the reality of this defeat was that there was little for Sturridge and his team-mates to berate themselves for.

Sure, they were not as clinical as they were

Sturridge fired into the side-netting after taking the ball round Fabianski in the first half.

Then, at the start of the second half, he delayed his shot, tried to take the ball past the keeper again, and was foiled by Fabianski’s intervention.

Raheem Sterling missed a chance, too, and Daniel Agger wasted a golden opportunity in the dying minutes.

But Liverpool still looked superb going forward. Luis Suarez, once again, was sublime and they created chance after chance.

They were denied an obvious penalty when Suarez was felled by Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.

And for much of the second half of a vibrant, committed, FA Cup fifth round tie, they had Arsenal on the rack.

“We are aggressive in our attack and we provoke a lot of challenges,” Liverpool boss Brendan Rodgers said afterwards.

“Luis Suarez is always asking questions of defenders and Daniel Sturridge is always a threat.

“He was disappointed at the end, obviously, but that is because he feels his responsibility to the team very keenly.”

(Image: Andrew Powell)

Many felt Liverpool were favourites yesterday after Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger rested several first team starters.

But clinical finishes from Oxlade-Chamberlain and

. The manner of their defeat, though, will have done little to dent their hopes of finishing in the top four of the Premier League.

The opposite, in fact. They have a thinner squad than many of the other leading contenders so having fewer games to play will be more important to them than it would be to their rivals.

And they proved again that they have the forward threat to cause defenders discomfort every time they play.

And with a calendar cleared of distractions, they can pour all their efforts into the fight for a Champions League spot.

Tottenham, Manchester City and Chelsea must all visit Anfield before the end of the season.

And while Liverpool have played the rest of the top four away from home, four of their remaining 12 games are against teams in the bottom six.

So even though his players were disconsolate yesterday, even though there was bitterness surrounding Webb’s penalty decision, Rodgers did not look downhearted.

He knows that his team lost the chance to progress to a Merseyside derby quarter-final against Everton.

But he also knows there is a bigger picture and that it shows a Liverpool team edging closer and closer to rejoining English football’s elite.