Suarez and Sturridge deliver (ESPN article)

by Dave Usher for ESPN

Two weeks ago Liverpool lost at home to Southampton and relinquished top spot in the table. I'll be honest, I didn't think we'd see the Reds back on top of the pile again this season, yet a fortnight later that's exactly where they are following another "Suarez and Sturridge" (or SAS as they have been dubbed in some quarters) inspired victory.

That league position will change if Arsenal can avoid defeat against West Brom at the Hawthorns on Sunday of course, but irrespective of what the Gunners do, Brendan Rodgers' men will still be in good shape going into yet another international break. There never used to be this many, did there?

Liverpool's performance against Ian Holloway's struggling Crystal Palace was patchy, with the first half being far more impressive than the second. That's been a recurring theme this season, prompting much analysis and speculation from the supporters. Are these second-half disappointments down to fitness, tactics, a combination of both or something else? In previous games you could make a case for all of the above, but this one was purely down to complacency and players taking their foot off the gas after effectively winning the game in the opening 45 minutes.

It was almost like they were conserving energy ahead of a difficult midweek Champions League game, we saw several of these kinds of games under Rafa Benitez for example. Get the game won and then don't expend unnecessary energy. That's fine when you actually have a difficult midweek Champions League game coming up, but Liverpool don't. In fact, with no European football and having already been knocked out of the Capital One Cup, the Reds barely have to worry about any midweek games between now and the New Year. There's no need to be conserving energy for anything and it would have been nice to see the players maintain the first half intensity and record a big victory.

Liverpool famously once put nine past Palace at Anfield, and Holloway had bizarrely spoken in the build up to this game about how "it's worth a 10-0 hammering" just to be able to hear the Kop singing You'll Never Walk Alone. When the Reds raced into a 2-0 lead early on, he was probably regretting saying that.

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