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Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images
The Standard Chartered Player of the Month talks about his new role in Klopp’s team.
The people have voted, and Trent Alexander-Arnold is the Standard Chartered Liverpool Player of the Month for April. This award was given in honor of his six assists last month, as well as the quick way he’s taken to his new right-back-slash-central-midfielder role in the team.
Liverpool fans and those following the career of Alexander-Arnold are unsurprised that he has started being deployed in a more attacking role, as that always seemed destined to be his future.
He was asked what, exactly, he’d call his new hybrid position.
“To be honest, I don’t know what you’d call it,” he admitted. “People have different terms and different interpretations of it. I think I just play it the way the manager tells me to and the way I feel it needs to be played. But yeah, it’s getting on the ball more centrally, being able to impact the game in a central area and just having that freedom within there to express myself and help the team win games.”
The 24-year-old Scouser also revealed the conversation — or lack thereof — that went on between him and the staff regarding this switch, and that they hadn’t practiced it at all before the Arsenal match.
“It was kind of just telling me where I needed to be and within that me having the quality and the intelligence to be able to work with it,” Alexander-Arnold humble-bragged. “It was literally the day before the Arsenal game, to be honest, just sprung on us, ‘This is what we are going to do when we have the ball, build with two sixes and a back three and kind of mirror Arsenal’s shape and give them that problem.’ You saw [in the] first half it was difficult because it was brand new and we hadn’t worked on it, to be honest, but then second half we took control of the game and I think in a system and a formation like that having control of the game is vital.”
It’s clear that Alexander-Arnold is loving the opportunity to jump into this midfield role for the team, and he said as much when asked about it.
“I love a challenge, I love trying and learning new things and I think that’s something that I’ve really enjoyed this last month or so since being given that new role in the team: asking questions, learning, wanting to understand what to bring to it, how I can learn, how I can get better, how I can help the team, and just understanding a different role.”
This tweak in formation has coincided with Liverpool’s good run of form and their resurrected battle for a top four spot. That makes the final three games of the season — and Alexander-Arnold’s continued success — hugely important for their Champions League prospects next season.
