Curtis Jones owes his impressive recent return to form to his “Scouse mentality,” according to Liverpool assistant boss Pepijn Lijnders.
The last few months have seen the 22-year-old put a nightmare period in which his career was severely hampered by injury behind him to cement himself as a key player under Jurgen Klopp.
Jones secured a consistent starting berth during last season’s run-in and has since retained it by forming a brilliantly balanced trio with summer signings Dominik Szoboszlai and Alexis Mac Allister.
It is a situation the youngster could surely not have envisaged as he missed large chunks of the 2022/23 campaign with a stress injury that refused to subside.
Asked how this turnaround has been possible, Lijnders replied: “Because he has a Scouse mentality.
“Same as Trent, their dedication is difficult to describe. They are passionate about the game, the ball, there’s nothing else in their life.
“I’m really proud because these boys were really young when they were in our academy and Curtis has already played 100 games for Liverpool. I said to him on the stairway, ‘up to a 100 Premier League games [now]!’
“If you see last season, the last 10 games when we changed our setup, how he gave the midfield energy at that moment, you saw something that we really needed at that time.
“And he kept going, he deserved to start this season and play games because of that.
“But if you ask Curtis, he will say that he’s really happy that Dominik is here, that Alexis is here, and that’s also the Scouser mentality, that the team comes first.”
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