The Scottish full-back missed Liverpool’s opening two games of the Premier League season due to ankle ligament damage.
Follow Us
Liverpool full-back Andy Robertson has declared himself fit and ready for the mouth-watering clash against Chelsea in the Premier League on Saturday. The Scottish left-back missed Liverpool’s opening two games of the new league season due to ankle ligament damage. However, he was back in the matchday squad as an unused substitute for the 2-0 win over Burnley last weekend. Robertson, whose new long-term contract with the club was announced on Tuesday, expects to be available when Thomas Tuchel’s side visits Anfield. “I’m back in full training now. I fully trained on Friday, just one day before the game – maybe a bit ahead of schedule but I think the physios just wanted rid of me, to be honest!” he told Liverpoolfc.com.
“Obviously I’ve been very lucky in my career that I’ve not had too many injuries and certainly not long-term injuries, and long may that continue. But yeah, I’m a nightmare when I’m injured and I want to get back out on the pitch as quickly as possible. For me, as soon as I did it and I got the scan results I said, ‘I think Burnley is in my sights’ and there was a couple of people who said, ‘Yeah, you’ve got a chance’ so I managed to cling on to them and a couple of people said I had no chance so I avoided them until it was more realistic!”
Andy Robertson also said that he tried everything possible to be fit for the match against Burnley. “I tried my best, I tried everything. I was out running [and] I felt as if I could maybe have trained a day or two earlier but the experts we have at this club are excellent and I still needed to tick a couple of boxes, and luckily I did that on the Thursday. Then I fully trained with the team on the Friday,” he added.
“Obviously the gaffer put me on the bench, which was probably unexpected but I was happy. When you’re at the game and everything is involved you just want [to be] on the pitch, but I think that was unrealistic yesterday [Saturday]. Now I’ve trained today and I’ll have a full week of training so let’s see what happens against Chelsea. But I’ll be ready, I’ll be ready to play, and like I said I’ll hopefully be fit for the rest of the season now.”
This is the fifth season at Anfield for Andy Robertson. He has established himself as one of the regulars in the Liverpool squad. When asked whether there are still areas of his game that can be improved, Robertson replied, “I think every area I can still improve. Like I touched on before, I always want to get better. I look at ways how I can get better every single game, every single training session and that’s always the way I’ve worked. Probably my biggest doubter throughout my whole career has been myself and it’s always [about] trying to prove that person wrong.”
“But I know that person inside my head will never be happy and that’s the way I enjoy it because I always want to strive for more. So that’s probably the reason I will never get comfortable, I’ll always try to keep pushing myself and like I said, try to take my game to different levels. Whether that’s trying to get more assists or whether that’s trying to get more clean sheets, it’s different things. You know, becoming more vocal, maybe things that not everyone sees.”
Andy Robertson then went on to analyse how last campaign unfolded for him. “Last season was a big season for me and I look back on it with good memories. Some people out there would maybe say that I had a difficult season but I’d kind of disagree. I took on a different role; me and Gini [Wijnaldum] were the leaders at times with all the injuries we had and the way Nat Phillips and Rhys Williams played near the back end of the season, we take a lot of pride in that,” he added.
“Me and Gini helped them, Trent [Alexander-Arnold] helped them, and seeing those boys flourish was as big an achievement for me as me playing well as well and it meant that the more and more they grew in confidence, the less that I had to worry about them and the more we could all focus. These things are all different and it’s part of growing as a player, growing as a person, and I try to help the young boys as much as I can. But that was probably the most pleasing part for me last season.”
