Rodgers determined to keep Suarez

Brendan Rodgers hailed the performance of Luis Suarez and said his star man is going nowhere after Liverpool’s 2-1 win at Aston Villa.

Suarez won a penalty, converted by Steven Gerrard, as the visitors came from behind to take all three points from their trip to Villa Park on Sunday.

Liverpool manager Rodgers singled out Suarez for special praise, expressing his admiration for the forward’s ability to perform despite exerting himself on international duty last week.

“He (Suarez) is a wonderful player and I’ve got to say; he’s been away with Uruguay, he’s come back late on Thursday, he was in training on Friday. I was looking at him and how tired he was; his face, his body, he just looked totally shattered from all of the travel and the exertions of the games,” Rodgers said.

“But when you look at him today; his energy and his willingness to work for the team and just his sheer quality and imagination in the game was incredible. He really frightens defenders and obviously that led to the penalty,

“We don’t have to sell him. I think he’s very happy and we don’t need to sell him for the money or anything like that. Our job is trying to build a group here and add to it. We’ve bought; front players, midfield players and we want to keep striving forwards. There’s no need to sell him.”

Villa manager Paul Lambert was adamant his team will escape relegation, after their first loss in three matches left them 18th on the Premier League table.

“It’s a collective thing,” he said.

“Everyone is in it together and we move along to the next game. We are certainly playing well enough to win games.

“We’re certainly playing well enough and we don’t look like a team who are down the bottom at the minute. If we keep going we’ll win more games than not.

“Confidence is a big part of the game. We are not lacking in that. We are making errors because we’re young but the confidence is there.”