Steven Gerrard feels Liverpool are a lot stronger this season.

"I feel the squad is a lot stronger than last year," he told the official LFC Magazine.

"Any team suffers when their star striker is missing," he says. "Fernando scores a large part of our goals now. But he brings so much to the team, not just goals wise, but in terms of his work rate too.

"When a player of his class is missing you're obviously going to suffer a bit. But I'd like to think the squad is strong enough now to cope if any one of us is missing be it Torres, myself, Carra, or any of the players.

"That's what you've got to give Rafa credit for. He's built a big squad here to try and enable us to cope in all eventualities.

"There are certainly a lot more match winners about, plus we've got the lads back from the Olympics now too."