OPINION
Liverpool ran out 4-1 winners over Genk on Wednesday evening and it was a fantastic night for some players in particular.
Some of the players who no doubt will still be buzzing after the Reds’ latest win are the rarely-used duo of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Naby Keita.
Oxlade-Chamberlain stole the headlines due to scoring two cracking goals, while Keita stood out for the right reason despite not making the score sheet.
In fact, some Liverpool fans took to Twitter to call Keita their Man of the Match against Genk, as well as just generally, gush about how good the midfielder is.
This isn’t a surprise as the 24-year-old had a very good game as he maintained a 93.2 pass completion rate while touching the ball more than any other player as he had 140 touches and he managed to make one key pass as well as completed three dribbles. (Source: WhoScored)
Yet his performance wasn’t faultless and this didn’t escape Martin Keown’s attention.
The former Arsenal player while on commentary noticed that the midfielder at times miscontrolled the ball and suggested that he had been a little sloppy at times due to having been out of the team a long time.
“Just a couple of times now Keita has miscontrolled it, sometimes when you’ve been out such a long time, in and out of the team, sometimes you just get a bit sloppy,” said Keown during BT Sport’s coverage of Liverpool’s win over Genk (21:34, Wednesday, October 23rd).
“It’s to be expected.”
While Keown did rightly say Keita being sloppy is to be expected, it was only his second start of the season on Wednesday, his critique surely means Jurgen Klopp will continue to tread carefully over using him.
The 24-year-old for all his positives against Genk, was dispossessed three times, which was the joint-most times for a Liverpool player, and he did lose the ball due to a poor touch on one occasion. (Source: WhoScored)
It’s always worth noting most of these mistakes came as the game dragged on, which is probably a reflection of him getting tired from playing more minutes then he has been accustomed to in recent times.
So the Liverpool boss is no doubt aware that he has to continue to carefully manage Keita’s minutes in order to see him shine, rather than expect him to be ready to deliver the goods constantly by having him regularly start games in the coming weeks.
