It’s pretty obvious to us that Jurgen Klopp’s favourite Liverpool player is Roberto Firmino!
The Brazilian epitomises everything the manager demands and admires from offensive footballers.
Firmino has 19 goals and ten assists in all competitions this term, but it’s overall contribution that makes him so important.
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He puts in unrivalled work defensively high up the pitch, while his movement off the ball is incredibly smart, too. On it, he always shows invention.
For the boss, our 26-year-old is maybe the only player we can’t afford to leave out.
“He’s very important,” Klopp told Liverpoolfc.com.
“We have a lot of quality in the team, of course, but still sometimes [at a high level], sometimes [low], sometimes [in the middle] – not really consistent all the time in our offensive [play].
“But Roberto delivers, delivers and delivers. He doesn’t score all the time, he is not always brilliant, but if he is not brilliant then he works like a horse. It’s very important that you have this kind of stability there.
“Ingsy is in a very good way, Dom is in a very good way. But it is not easy to pass Roberto.
“Of course, there will be games when he cannot play, that’s absolutely OK. He played quite often, that means most of the time I think, ‘we should try it again with Roberto’.”
An injury to Firmino would be devastating, in short.
In his place, we’d have to bring in either Danny Ings or Dominic Solanke, neither of whom have scored a league goal in the past two years.
Firmino is very rarely sidelined, thankfully, but he’s been used heavily this term and there’s always a chance bad luck can strike.
Let’s hope it doesn’t.