Liverpool legend Graeme Souness has made a pretty baffling claim about why we may need to be cautious about summer signing Alisson.
In case you missed it yesterday, the Brazilian goalkeeper looked absolutely superb on his debut for us against Napoli.
MORE: (Video) Liverpool fans love Van Dijk reaction as Alisson pass sets up scoring move
Watching him in action, there’s every reason to believe Alisson will be a big success as Jurgen Klopp doesn’t exactly have the habit of splashing the cash unless he’s convinced the player is right for us.
Souness, however, believes Alisson’s lack of experience raises question-marks over him, even though that’s rarely much of an indicator over how good a player can be.
Consider, for instance, how a youngster like Trent and a relatively low-key signing like Andrew Robertson shone for us last season.
Or in a more direct comparison, how Ederson made such a difference for Manchester City despite arriving with arguably less experience – around the same number of club games, but behind Alisson in the Brazil pecking order, winning just one cap to Alisson’s 31.
‘A goalkeeper was clearly a priority and Liverpool have broken the world record for that position by signing Alisson from Roma for £67m’ Souness wrote in the Times.
‘He played in Brazil and Portugal, then was initially kept out of the Roma team by Wojciech Szczesny, who found English football difficult at Arsenal, so he’s not coming with 300-400 games at the highest level under his belt and, despite the fee, there has to be a question mark against him.’
While it’s perhaps wise not to get too ahead of ourselves – David de Gea was slow to settle at Manchester United, for instance – we wouldn’t take too much from Souness’ reasoning here as it’s largely just factually inaccurate.