BR: He's the best and he loves it here
Brendan Rodgers is confident Luis Suarez will be dismantling Barclays Premier League defences in a red shirt for many years to come.
The press conference that followed Liverpool's impressive 4-0 win over Wigan was dominated by questions about the Uruguayan after a hat-trick took him to the top of the Premier League scoring charts.
Journalists quizzed the boss on where Suarez ranked among the strikers currently playing in England - and also asked questions about the striker's long-term future.
Rodgers said: "For me there is not [a better striker in the Premier League]. He is clearly the Player of the Year for myself, and I'm sure he is for many other people around the country.
"He is absolutely incredible. Forget his quality - you talk about his hunger and desire. He trains every single day of his life. He never wants to opt out of training and have an easy day or a rest.
"And then every time he comes out onto the pitch he gives stunning performances and gives his maximum.
"A brilliant hat-trick for him and a great day for the team, because this is a difficult place to come. To play like that and get the goals and the clean sheet was terrific for us."
Rodgers was asked how difficult it was to convince a player such as Suarez that Champions League football was not important.
He replied: "It's hard to say it's not important. Top players want to play at the top level but he's got a real affinity here within the players. He's a real leader within the group.
"The supporters adore him, he loves the city of Liverpool, he loves being here and he genuinely sees there's a bright future for us.
"It would have been easy for him last summer to have walked out, but he didn't. He's very happy.
"Of course, we know all players want to play at the top level, but hopefully he can see that for us over the next couple of years.
"I am very confident we can keep making the strides forward and keep adding quality to our group and eventually we can get there.
"I don't have any issues with Luis at all on this matter. I sit here with great confidence that he'll stay.
"There will always be interest in top players, and he's a world-class player, there's absolutely no question about that.
"I speak regularly with Luis and I had a good meeting with his agent a couple of weeks ago, who expressed it from his perspective as well how happy the player is and how much he wants to be a part of the vision here going forward."
Stewart Downing was Liverpool's other goalscorer as they made it 12 goals in three games.
On the performance as a whole, Rodgers said: "There was a real focus and concentration in our game today. We've got performance goals that we want to finish the season with and it will give us a real good base going forward.
"We've played well a lot of this season. What's set us behind has been individual errors and mistakes. The good thing about today is I could see the real work the players are putting in. The graft they're doing on the training field is being taken into the games.
"They're now very accustomed to how we ask them to play. To press as a team, high up the pitch, and then when to drop into a block.
"They controlled the game. All four goals were built from behind and we finished it off with great goals."
Liverpool are now nine points away from a top-four slot ahead of Tottenham's encounter with Arsenal on Sunday, but Rodgers insists he is not focusing on those above.
"We're not even thinking that," he said, "All we're looking at at this moment of time is the next game. We spoke about that over the last couple of games. There were 11 games to go and we wanted to continue on building our focus and concentration and on improving.
"You just have to give a great credit to the players. It would have been very easy, especially after getting knocked out of the Europa League, to feel sorry for themselves.
"We've really come together as a group and you saw today everyone fighting for each other. You saw with the celebrations from the goals that we are very much one team.
"We'll just focus on finishing as high as we can and look to finish the season strongly."