OPINION
The success of loan spells can make or break players, and for Liverpool loanee Ovie Ejaria, his time at Rangers will end up costing him his Reds career.
It’s too early to write off the 20-year-old completely, of course, but his latest showing against Rapid Vienna on Thursday night will have done nothing to convince Jurgen Klopp that he deserves a place in his squad moving forward.
The woeful midfielder looked too nonchalant at times against the Austrian outfit, and was consistently guilty of needlessly giving the ball away.
Klopp wants his players to take risks with the ball as they try to make things happen in the attacking areas, but the German won’t thank Ejaria for surrendering possession so easily in the middle of the park.
Thursday wasn’t the first time that the Englishman has had an off night for Steven Gerrard’s side this season, and he has regularly struggled with the step up in quality in the Europa League.
If he cannot cut the mustard against the second tier citizens of European competition then he will simply never be able to make an impact for Liverpool.
Rapid Vienna aren’t a top team by any stretch of the imagination, and so it’s worrying to see Ejaria look so out of place in midfield against them.
When you compare the Rangers man’s form to some of his fellow English youngsters like Phil Foden, Jadon Sancho and Mason Mount, it’s clear that he has a lot of catching up to do.
It may be that he’s just not good enough to flourish for a side like Liverpool at the very top level. That doesn’t mean he’s a bad player, simply that he may not be in that upper echelon of stars that regularly inhabit the Reds’ first team.
Hope isn’t completely lost, and as mentioned it is too early to be dismissing the youngster all together, but he needs to produce more consistent performance for Gerrard’s side if he’s ever to have a hope of gatecrashing Klopp’s expensively assembled midfield.
Once he returns to Anfield he’ll be competing with the likes of Jordan Henderson, Naby Keita, James Milner, Fabinho, Georginio Wijnaldum and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. That’s an all star cast of quality midfielders that no ordinary youngster will be able to break into.
Judging by Ejaria’s performances for the Scottish giants so far this season, he sadly might not have the ability to crash the Reds’ midfield party.
