Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has revealed how he plans to use new signing Naby Keita in his line up.
The Guinean international joined Liverpool for £54m this summer after an impressive spell in the German Bundesliga with RB Leipzig.
He joins Fabinho and Alisson in a group of highly-talented players to have signed for the Reds this summer.
Jurgen Klopp thinks the key for Liverpool will be Keita’s versatility across the midfield with the German manager seeing the Guinean playing a number of roles during his time at the club.
“He is a creative midfield player with discipline; tactical discipline is a big strength of his usually. He’s doing the right things in the right moment, that’s how good players are,” said Klopp to the official Liverpool website.
“I don’t want to give him 500,000 [pieces of] information. We got him because he is the player he is and now we want to work with that. That means first of all we let him go and adapt to our system.”
Asked about how he sees Keita fitting in with the system, Klopp went on to explain that he sees the midfielder playing in a number of roles.
“I see him as an ‘8’, he can play ’10’ as well, maybe in the future he can play ‘6’ as well,” he said.
Klopp was also quick to acknowledge that Keita impressed a lot at Leipzig when he was utilised as a winger, but sees him in a slightly different role on Merseyside.
“At Leipzig, he played as a winger, that’s for sure not his best position but he can play it because he has the speed for it, he has the football intelligence for it.
“We see him as a creative No.8 playing the passes and making the runs with the ball. With the ball he has the same speed as without, you don’t have a lot of players with this quality.
“We know what he’s good in and we try to fit it into our game, but that should not be a big problem.”
Liverpool start their season on Sunday August 12 at home to West Ham United. Before then, the Reds face Manchester City on Thursday in the International Champions Cup and Manchester United on Saturday.
Klopp is under pressure to win his first title with the club having lost in the Europa League final to Sevilla in 2015 and painfully losing the Champions League Final last season to Real Madrid a match in which goalkeeper Karius made some schoolboy mistakes.
Already, star man Mo Salah has signed a new longterm deal. This means that Klopp is under immense pressure to deliver with his expensively assembled squad.
Salah, the PFA player of the year last season scored 32 premier league goals and you may bet on him improving on that tally especially with the new quality midfield additions.
The reds have also acquired shaqiri, a Champions League winner with Bayern Munich. It is believed that one of the reasons why they came short in the the tournament was because none of the players in the squad had won the tournament.