‘You can tell…’ – John Arne Riise says there’s one thing Milos Kerkez can improve at Liverpool

John Arne Riise is convinced that Milos Kerkez will become a success at Liverpool, but has offered one piece of advice to the summer signing.

The 22-year-old has started the majority of the Reds’ Premier League games this season but has frequently found himself benched in favour of Andy Robertson in the Champions League, with Arne Slot alternating between the left-back duo in recent matches.

The Hungarian has been subjected to plenty of external criticism over his performances in his first few months at Anfield, with Gary Neville chiming that he ‘plays like a 10-year-old‘ and Chris Sutton claiming that the head coach has ‘lost faith‘ in our number 6 since the start of the campaign.

Riise advises Kerkez to ‘relax’

Riise is well placed to empathise with Kerkez, having also been an overseas left-back who joined Liverpool in his early 20s, and believes that the Liverpool youngster just needs to be more relaxed on the pitch in order to silence his critics.

The Norwegian told FootItalia: “He took the No. 6 because I used to wear it, and so I texted him a few times after his move. I wished him well and all that kind of thing.

“You know, he’s a very aggressive player that hasn’t really shown his best yet. The one thing I see is that everything with him happens at 100 miles an hour. Sprinting, running, everything is always at a high tempo.

“I think that sometimes he can just maybe relax his playing style. I know that is who he is, but it looks so stressful sometimes. You can tell that he really wants to do well all the time, which is good, but sometimes he can maybe take more time.

“He’s been good in some games, others he’s struggled in, but I expect him to be fine because he knows the English game, and hopefully he will be more of an attacking threat also in the upcoming games.”

Kerkez has had to adapt his game since joining Liverpool

Kerkez has had to deal with the expectation which comes with joining the Premier League champions for £40m (BBC Sport), and he probably hasn’t adapted to life at Liverpool as easily as some fans would’ve liked.

As Riise has said, the Hungarian can sometimes be so keen to impress that maybe he does rush things on the pitch and duly ties himself up in knots, and it’s natural that he’ll want to prove himself after such a high-profile transfer.

However, the 22-year-old spoke of the subtle changes that he’s had to make to his game under Slot since his summer move from Bournemouth, and understandably that can take time to perfect.

Kerkez has already shown that he can excel in the Premier League, and whilst reasonably experienced at a high level (80 appearances in the English top flight), he’s still a young player with plenty of scope to learn and improve as his career progresses.

He’d be wise to take Riise’s advice on board, and hopefully in time he’ll grow into his role within the Liverpool team, just as Robertson did after he joined from Hull eight years ago.

You can watch Slot’s full post-Inter Milan press conference below, via Empire of the Kop on YouTube:

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