Jurgen Klopp has piled praise onto Brazilian midfielder Fabinho, who did a ‘brilliant’ job at filling in at centre-back against Brighton, with Dejan Lovren and Joe Gomez injured, and Joel Matip not yet ready to start.
Klopp had been urged by most people to sign another defender this January but has been proven right, with Fabinho doing well there and Matip, Lovren and Gomez returning in the next few weeks.
Alongside Virgil van Dijk at Brighton yesterday, Fabinho looked at home at the back, despite not having played there before, certainly in a red shirt.
According to the Daily Star, Klopp enthused: “Fabinho is a brilliant player. To have a good footballer in that position when you have the ball is great.
“It was not one attack after another, we had the ball most of the time but Brighton tried to bring the long balls around Glenn Murray, like with Joe Gomez in the home game – but he did well in these situations as well.
“He has a defensive brain and can play in a lot of positions.”
Brighton posed a limited attacking threat, and as Klopp says, the Reds saw most of the possession, but to combat the threat of the experienced Glenn Murray so easily shows Fabinho has really settled in English football now.
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Hopefully, he won’t have to play in the centre of the defence too many times in future – his quality is much better served being used in the middle of the pitch, where he is even more comfortable – but he has shown that, against lesser opposition, Fabinho is an option at centre-back.