Liverpool brought in Takumi Minamino from Salzburg at the start of the new year but the midfielder has failed to settle down at the club managing to play in only three Premier League matches so far, for a total of just 77 minutes.
But speaking before the Merseyside Derby, Reds manager Jurgen Klopp has revealed that this unexpected lockdown has really helped Minamino catch up with the paces of English football.
“Oh yes, massively so,” the boss replied when asked about Minamino’s progress in the past few months.
“Look, a new player is coming in and usually, how it is with us especially, you say, ‘Come on, the first two, three, four months you don’t really judge’. We don’t, but I know the public does and that means then we always have to explain why it’s not like this [and] why it’s not like that and all these things.
“And the more time you have, for whatever reason, the better it is and now we had four weeks [since Liverpool returned to training] – which is, by the way, the longest pre-season I ever had with any Liverpool side together. We were all together over that period and that’s a massive difference.
“Usually we have altogether only one [week], or I think last year it was not even a week when Sadio came back, for example.
“Yes, it helped. It helped him [Minamino], it helped the young kids a lot.
“So yes it helped and Taki, 100 per cent. He looks really different in the moment to the first three weeks when he tried to please everybody and do everything that we say, and that’s in a language he is not 100 per cent comfortable with.
“That’s how it is so now we had much more time, he had much more time to settle and he settled. That’s good and yeah, that helped.”
Will Takumi Minanimo start vs Everton?
Liverpool take on Everton on Sunday in the Premier League and many pundits believe Takumi Minamino could feature in the starting line-up at Goodison.
While the Japanese will be itching to get back onto the pitch but we don’t think the manager will name him from the start, more so since Mo Salah is back to full fitness and available for selection.
But once Liverpool manage to wrap up the Premier League title, Klopp will obviously make massive rotations to his starting line-up and then Takumi Minamino could get a lot of match time under his belt.
