Liverpool midfielder Lucas Leiva believes young talents the likes of Lazar Markovic, Philippe Coutinho and Emre Can will only get better as the season progesses.
Markovic was especially impressive as the Reds beat Sunderland 1-0 on Saturday, whilst Coutinho has been the Reds best player of the past month.
Meanwhile 20-year-old Can has recently broken into the side as a third centre half, and was also impressive in a more advanced role during the second half at the Stadium of Light.
And Lucas – who has also been a key part in the Reds recent turnaround – insists the young talents in the Liverpool squad are only going to get better.
Speaking after Markovic’s match-winning performance, the Brazilian said: “There’s no doubt he’s a very young player and people usually judge players after one or two months.
“We know that the Premier League is a hard league to come and play in straight away, so he’s just improving all the time and today he showed again that he could be very important for the future of the club.”
On Coutinho, Lucas said: “I think Coutinho can get anywhere he wants. His quality and his movement and his final pass. Philippe has been here for two years now and you can see he will only get better.
“They are young players. When you have difficult moments during the season, normally the young players struggle a bit more. But they have the quality and I think they will be very important.”
“It’s good to win away from home and keep a clean sheet at a difficult place to come to,” he said of the win over Sunderland. “But we had a plan to win the game and we probably could have scored more goals.
“I think we had the patience to move the ball very well. We knew that Sunderland play very compact and that they are always very hard to break down. But I think we were very dangerous on the counter-attack and we were pressing the ball very well. So I think we deserved it.”
He added: “I thought for the first 10 minutes of the second half that we were probably too deep again. They had a chance, which hit the crossbar, but apart from that, I think we controlled the game and it was a well-deserved win.”
