Jurgen Klopp believes Curtis Jones is looked upon harshly by certain Liverpool fans as he is “our own,” praising his run of five starts in a row.
Jones had only started two games this season prior to his current run, those coming in October and November respectively, owing to a long-term injury.
His lack of minutes, and the desire for a rebuild in the middle of the park, led many supporters to consign him to the scrapheap, as one of those to be sold this summer.
But with the 22-year-old now overcoming his stress-response issues and producing an excellent spell of form as part of Liverpool’s turnaround, Klopp lauded him for being able to “show up again.”
“It’s always [like this] with the boys from your own academy. People fancy big transfers [instead],” he told reporters.
“If our own academy boy plays good football, it’s ‘that’s OK – but I would prefer bringing him in, bringing him in, bringing him in’.
“So I’m really happy for Curtis that he could show up now again.
“He is and always was only in the squad because he has real quality. Now you can see it.
“You can see that he is good on the ball – safe on the ball, which is super helpful – and defends extremely good, which is even more important because they are all good footballers.
“He deserves that spell, definitely. He deserves that.
“He’s had a tough time to go through and it’s hard if you don’t really feel injured but they tell you you are, you’re not allowed to do this and to do that.
“That’s really hard, especially for a young man. He got through this and is now in a good shape. That’s it.”
Jones could keep his place for a sixth game in a row as Liverpool host Tottenham this weekend, having excelled in his left-sided role in a new-look system.
That Klopp has been able to change his formation – to something closer to a 3-4-3 – comes due to more time on the training pitch.
This, the manager explained, has also aided Jones’ recovery, having been unable to build up a regular training schedule with the rest of the squad earlier in the season.
“That he has now five games in a row is obviously great, but it didn’t look for a long time during the season that these kinds of things would be possible,” Klopp said.
“We spoke about it, he had a freakish injury and we had to be super careful with him – super, super, super careful with him.
“Even when he was back in training, he was not allowed to have a normal training week, because the time when Curtis came back into the team we were still involved in European football.
“It meant we didn’t train properly, which makes it really difficult for players who come back to get up to speed.
“It was really, super difficult to organise.
“But then there was a moment when he was allowed to and we could train again normally.
“Then it was pretty quickly clear that the sessions he had around our sessions were obviously, from a physical point of view, really good.
“He looked ready pretty quick, and now you can see that.”
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