Jurgen Klopp admitted he wasn’t happy with how he described Wataru Endo’s situation at the club amid competition with Dominik Szoboszlai and Alexis Mac Allister for places.
The German had referred to the Japanese international’s politeness in a previous press conference, but made clear that he’s pleased with how the player is getting on at L4.
“Some people have a personality of getting into something and taking everything, and the others come in, look left and right, and say ‘let’s have a look first’,” the 56-year-old spoke to reporters (Liverpool’s YouTube channel).
“That says nothing about this person, it’s just your character. But both can succeed, it’s just different timescales.
“Now we’ve two new players in Dom and Macca who just [snaps fingers] step in and hello, here we are.
“A bit later, Ryan obviously [arrives] who is doing pretty well as well… if we don’t give people time anymore, what kind of world is that?
“I’m not surprised, that’s how he trains. It looks really good, super promising, and it’s exactly what we wanted.
“He’s a top, top guy and I’m really happy for him that he could show the outside world a first glimpse of his quality.”
The former Stuttgart skipper has been limited to 241 minutes for his new club across six appearances, most recently impressing in a 3-1 victory over Leicester City.
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One might feel inclined to remind impatient fans just how long it took specialist holding midfielder Fabinho to adapt to the demands of Klopp’s style of football, never mind the demands of the English top-flight.
Plenty will still feel a need to slight Liverpool for their decision to recruit a 30-year-old after landing a trio of young midfielders to rejuvenate a department in desperate need of a rethink after the troubles of 2022/23.
As long as the player has our German tactician’s backing – and the stats certainly support it – Endo will have ours.