Liverpool left-back Andy Robertson expressed his delight after making his first league start in four months, having recovered from a shoulder injury sustained on international duty with Scotland in October last year.
The 29-year-old played the full 90 minutes as the Reds reclaimed the top spot in the Premier League table with a 3-1 victory over Burnley on Saturday.
The match saw Diogo Jota open the scoring for the hosts, countered by Dara O’Shea’s equalizer on the stroke of half-time.
Luis Diaz restored Liverpool’s lead with the goal undergoing a prolonged VAR check for potential offside before Darwin Nunez secured the points with a late header into the left corner.
“I loved it today,” Robertson told Liverpoolfc.com. “The gaffer spoke to me yesterday and just said, ‘We don’t have many options!’ He said try to forget that I’ve been out for four months, which is easy for him to say, I suppose!
“But that was my mentality when I woke up before it, to try to forget about it and hope it clicks back into gear. I thought it did, to be fair, I thought I had rhythm, I was up and down as I normally would be, I tried to help Lucho [Diaz] on the overlap and get involved in the game.
“Happy to be back, happy to get 94, 95 minutes, delighted to be back starting, and hopefully that’s me until the end of the season.
“Four months out is a long time but the lads have done unbelievably well. Now I need to step up to their level and today was a good start.”
He added: “[It was] a really difficult afternoon against a really good team.
“I don’t know how they’re in the position they are, because they played really good football, and they’ve got a lot of exciting young players.
“They made it difficult for us, it was never an easy afternoon, I think we knew that from the first whistle. But this team, more often than not, finds a way, and luckily we managed that today.”
“Caoimhin made an unbelievable save, I think Ali [Alisson Becker] would have been proud of that one, and then the boy [Fofana] had another big chance two minutes later or so.
“Then we kind of kicked back into gear, controlled the game from there on, got the third goal, which was important, and then saw it out for a big three points.”
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