Micah Richards heaped praise on Liverpool attacker Roberto Firmino and claimed his work for the team goes unnoticed.
The BBC pundit suggested that Firmino needed to be seen live in order to appreciate his talents as it’s only when seeing him perform in the flesh that you realise how good a player he is.
“I watch Firmino live and I always compare strikers to Aguero, he always scores, but the work Firmino does for the team goes unnoticed and it’s only when you see these players live that you realise how good they are,” said Richards on BBC Radio 5 Live, in a clip uploaded to the broadcaster’s Twitter account.
The 28-year-old Reds forward has scored three goals and registered eight assists in the 18 appearances he has made across all competitions.
OPINION
When you consider that Firmino has only averaged a goal every 334 minutes, as per BBC Sport, compared to Sadio Mane who has scored every 139 minutes and Mohamed Salah who has struck every 145 minutes, on paper he’s not your traditional No.9. As normally you’d expect the club’s No.9 or any of the club’s first-choice forwards to be banging in the goals regularly in order to be a success, but that isn’t the case with Firmino. The 28-year-old brings so much more to the table and it seems Richards still believes a lot of the attacker’s work is hard to notice. Yet you do feel that most people have woken up and smelt the coffee when it comes to realising how important Firmino is to Jurgen Klopp’s side. The 28-year-old clearly helps link the club’s midfield to its attack, and he does this by dropping deep. Firmino has averaged 1.4 key passes per league game this season and has completed 1.9 dribbles per league match, as per WhoScored, and these stats show that when he is dropping deep, he’s either making a cutting pass to create an opening or running the ball forward to get it in the right areas.
