28 Mar 2016

'Big Player': Redknapp hails 'brilliant' Liverpool star who almost quit Anfield last summer

After making several promising appearances earlier in the season, Reds full-back Brad Smith is currently languishing on the sidelines at Anfield, but Premier League legend Harry Redknapp believes that the Australian has a big future at Liverpool.

Speaking ahead of Jordan's AFC qualifier with Australia on Tuesday, Redknapp described Smith as a 'threat' and predicted that he'd be become a regular under Jurgen Klopp:

"I was impressed the other night by [Brad] Smith. I think is going to be a big player for Liverpool in the future".

I'm not so sure. I get the feeling that Smith - who almost quit Liverpool last summer - will go the same way as Teixeira, i.e. constantly on the fringes of the first team until he gets to 23/24, before realising that he's wasting his time at Liverpool.

Klopp has ignored Smith for almost two months now, and delivered a gigantic snub recently by playing James Milner ahead of him in a Europa League game with Man Utd.

After that decision, Klopp's acolytes were out in force defending their deity with the usual lame excuses/rationalisations, but the bottom line is that Klopp chose to play someone out of position rather than utilise a dedicated left-back.

Smith is, however, deemed to be trustworthy enough to play important World Cup qualifiers for Australia, but is, apparently, not good enough to play in the Europa League for Liverpool.

Smith is 22 in a couple of weeks, and has just 29 minutes of Premier League game time to his name. With Moreno and (Klopp-favourite) Jon Flanagan in the squad, and Liverpool reportedly in the market for more full-backs this summer, I don't see how that's going to change next season.

Author: Jaimie K


0 Comments:

Post a Comment