Andy Robertson: Hopefully we can all have an injury-free season

After captaining Scotland at Euro 2020, Liverpool left-back Andy Robertson has reported to the club’s training camp in Austria last week after an extended break. Robertson feels recharged and is “ready” for another big season ahead. He might be in line to play some part in Thursday’s friendly with Hertha BSC. “Obviously a lot got put into the last season, obviously me playing a lot of games. Physically I felt it but emotionally as well, it was an up-and-down season,” he told Liverpoolfc.com.

“I was emotionally drained, I think, after the Euros, obviously I put everything into it and then for the way it ended, the next week I was pretty tired and just tried to relax. Luckily the manager gave me a bit of extra time off, which was appreciated. I got to spend some quality family time but more importantly let my body recover that wee bit more. I feel good, I feel fresh, I feel ready to go and ready for hopefully another big season ahead.”

Andy Robertson also spoke about how they have continued to improve even when they were winning major trophies recently. “Even in the season before when we were champions and the season before that when we were champions of Europe, we continually wanted to improve. Obviously last season didn’t go the way we wanted it to for a number of reasons but one of the reasons was we maybe didn’t take our chances at times when we were on top and we also got punished at the other end. It’s about adapting, improving as a team,” he added.

“The good thing is we’re an honest group of boys that are willing to improve, the coaches are willing to improve as well. When you have that, things can only get better. We look to work on these situations, we look to maybe punish teams a wee bit more when we have these situations come our way. Also on the other side, we need to keep more clean sheets than we did last season because we didn’t keep enough.”

Liverpool were plagued with injuries in their defence, with Virgil van Dijk, Joe Gomez, and Joel Matip missing the majority of last season. But now they are back in pre-season training. Speaking about it, Andy Robertson said, “Long may that continue. You don’t want to see anyone injured. Last season we had injuries but they were bad ones. Sometimes you go through seasons where maybe people pick up two- or three-week [injuries] and you don’t see that they’re missing. But the ones we picked up last season were lengthy ones.”

“We’ve still not got probably the loudest in training back – Hendo will be coming back and I’m sure he’ll be fired up, obviously we’ve missed him since February. In terms of Virg, Joe, Joel, it’s great to see these boys back out on the pitch. We’ve been through their whole rehab together – the good times and the bad – and you can see how positive they’re looking. Long may that continue, long may we have all these options all over the pitch because there’s nothing worse than injuries and hopefully we can all have an injury-free season.”