Roberto Firmino has heaped praise on Liverpool teammate Fabio Carvalho following the Portuguese midfielder's impressive start to life at Anfield.
The 19-year-old made the switch to the Reds from Fulham in the summer and he has made quite the impact during his short time at the club. Carvalho scored his first Liverpool goal in their thumping 9-0 win over Bournemouth before netting the winner in the Reds' dramatic victory over Newcastle.
That goal was enough to earn him his first Liverpool start but Carvalho was forced off at half-time in their goalless draw against Everton after picking up a dead leg. Carvalho wasn't fit enough to return for Liverpool's Champions League trip to Napoli, where they suffered a disappointing 4-1 defeat.
Although Liverpool have made an inconsistent start to the Premier League season, having picked up just eight points from a possible 18, Carvalho's form has been a shining light. Firmino is someone who has been impressed by the Portugal Under-21 international, with the Brazilian claiming he is a "craque".
"He’s a great player," he told Eleven Sports, as relayed by Noticias ao Minuto. "I confess that I had already watched some of his games before coming to Liverpool, so I was already impressed by the way he played.
"He’s a craque, he’s a great player and now he’s also a very close friend. We are happy to have him here at Liverpool and I know he will help us a lot, with assists, goals and also his character on the pitch."
Liverpool were beaten comprehensively by Napoli in their last game on Wednesday, with Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa and Giovanni Simeone adding to Piotr Zielinski's brace. Klopp was far from impressed with his side's performance, telling the club's website : "It’s obviously not the first time I have spoken to media so I have said it now a couple of times. I think the problems we had tonight were obvious.
"Number one, Napoli played a really good game and we played a really bad game. Why did we play a bad game? We cannot ignore the start and how it happened, how it started with the penalty and then shortly after that another penalty.
"In this atmosphere, that’s not easy, but our problems obviously were that we just didn’t play good enough. That means in our specific case we were never compact.
"I can’t remember a situation where we were compact. We had for 60 minutes not one counter-pressing situation in a game where we lost a lot of balls, just because we were far away.
"That means we were too wide in possession, we were not pushing up with the last line, the midfield was not connected, so these are the football things and they are obvious.
"The questions now, because I know the boys want - they want to win football games - and the questions why they don’t do, that’s obviously my job to figure that out. It is not the first time that we don’t play completely well, I know that, and there are some reasons which we know, but I really think with all the things that happened we should have played a much better game tonight - and we didn’t. Again, it is my responsibility."
