Alberto Moreno is already playing favourites between Liverpool’s former manager and Jurgen Klopp.
Moreno was brought to Anfield by Brendan Rodgers in 2014 but felt that he was treated less than fairly by the Northern Irishman and that being left out of the first team left the fullback in “a rage”.
“Jurgen talks with me a lot,” Moreno said. “I do feel he trusts me, he spends a lot of time with me. The fact he has spent so much time with me, I think, shows up in good performances on the field.
“I perhaps felt that Brendan didn’t have quite so much confidence in me, certainly at the start of the season. He told me I was training hard but then I didn’t feature for those first five or six games.
“He said to me that it was still early in the season and that my opportunity would come but after the first game against Stoke, when we kept a clean sheet, he said he wasn’t going to change anything defensively at that point.
“It is true that when I was out of the team I was angry. It never entered my head that I was going to leave as I want to stay forever, but I had this inner anger, a rage almost.
“I felt I was playing well, training well. He told me that I was training well. But I couldn’t see why I wasn’t getting a chance at the beginning.”
And the Spanish international has revealed that life in Liverpool is already much better under new boss Jurgen Klopp as he feels that his performances have improved under the German who is also keen on getting Moreno to quickly get a grasp of English, rather than rely on Lucas Leiva as a translator.
“I think I am playing well,” Moreno added. “I feel like I have fully integrated into the team again. Not being in the side for the first five or six games just inspired to me work as hard as I could in training so I could fight for my place in the starting XI.
“The manager has a huge passion for the game which I think I do. He wants you to express yourself on the field. He wants you to offer not 100% but 200% when you are performing and I think I offer that. It fits in with me.
“He really wants me to learn English as quickly as possible so he can get his ideas over. I have to brush up on my English.
“Through Lucas, he tells me to get forward, to be attack-minded. When I am defending, he tells me to be aggressive and stay tight to the person that I am marking. When I am going forward, not to be scared or play with tension and to be relaxed in possession of the ball.”
