Though Man City managed to demolish Chelsea on Sunday, Liverpool were able to have a successful weekend of their own. Amid concern of a potential Liverpool collapse, the Reds shunned the doubters and produced a convincing win over Bournemouth, with Jurgen Klopp’s men showing no signs of a potential blip in pursuit of the Premier League title.
They’ve got a lot of hard work still to do if they want to win the title, of course, but they can only focus on their next fixtures – and they certainly impressed against Bournemouth.
Everyone in the Liverpool squad deserves a lot of credit for their performance, and BBC pundit Garth Crooks has singled out Roberto Firmino for praise following the Reds’ weekend game. Putting the Brazilian in his team of the week, he’s compared him to two Liverpool greats.
He said: ‘I’ve gone for Firmino because, without him, the team doesn’t function quite the same. He makes Liverpool tick in the same way Luis Suarez and Philippe Coutinho used to.’
Of course, Firmino is a different player to both Suarez and Coutinho. The former was, and still is, one of Europe’s most lethal forwards, and his goals regularly helped take Liverpool to the next level. Philippe Coutinho, meanwhile, was the chief playmaker at Anfield, and a lot of the good things they did going forward went through him. Firmino isn’t either of those things, but what he is is the perfect combination of both.
He’s able to score important goals, and he’s certainly improved that side of his game over the last couple of years. However, he’s also far more gifted than Luis Suarez as far as his link-up play is concerned. This often means that he doesn’t get the goalscoring glory, but he’s sometimes the only player on the pitch that could have helped produce the chance that made the goal.
Firmino has got a fantastic relationship with Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah, and if you took him out of there and replaced him with someone like Daniel Sturridge, you can bet that they would both score less goals and the Reds would be far less emphatic going forward.
In many ways, Firmino has turned into the complete forward. He’s a fantastic goalscorer, but he’s also brilliant with the ball at his feet, and he’s the sort of figure that top players love to play alongside.
It’s certainly not hyperbolic of Crooks to compare him to Coutinho and Suarez – as he’s every bit as important to his Liverpool team as they were to theirs.
Thoughts?
