'Performances dropped': Slot says 'outstanding' Liverpool player wowed him in pre-season but then tailed off

Today at 08:30 AM

Liverpool’s season so far has been characterised by improvements being shown from individual players.

After 16 games in all competitions, the Reds find themselves top of both the Premier League and Champions League tables. It has been quite the start.

Arne Slot deserves all the praise he’s currently getting after guiding Liverpool to the best start in the club’s history.

However, Slot has still relied on the players out on the pitch to do the business for him. And it’s fair to say that the Liverpool squad have shown up for him right from day one.

When the Dutch coach stepped into the Liverpool training ground for the very first time, it soon became apparent who he could count on.

And looking back on those first few weeks on Friday, Slot named one Reds star who had really impressed him initially before unfortunately dropping off.

Arne Slot reviews Curtis Jones turnaround

Slot has made it fairly clear during his time at Liverpool who his favoured players are.

Although most of the squad have played their part in this fantastic start, there have been 12 or 13 who have been counted on much more regularly than the rest.

Up until recently, Curtis Jones did not find himself amongst that group. Jones was immediately enthusiastic about working with Slot but an injury picked up over the summer set him back.

From there, the 23-year-old has slowly worked his way back into the picture, though, and is now one of Liverpool’s most in-form players.

READ MORE: England boss Lee Carsley raves about Curtis Jones after latest international call-up

Asked about Jones’ terrific recent displays during his pre-Aston Villa press conference, Slot said that he had immediately been impressed by the Liverpool academy graduate and was pleased to see him thriving after a slight ‘drop’ in performance.

“With Curtis maybe it’s not me who did it, he became a father and I had nothing to do with that!” joked the Reds boss.

“You never know if that plays a part or not but since the moment he became a father he started putting great performances in. He already did this in the first few weeks that we worked together, I was like ‘phwoar, quality player’ but then his performances dropped a bit, but now he’s outstanding again.”

Can Curtis Jones get consistent starts?

Slot went on to speak about the specific qualities he sees in Jones’ game.

“He has a lot of quality on the ball and when he has it he’s never afraid to do something special with it,” said the 46-year-old.

“In my opinion, sometimes he touched the ball a bit too much, maybe he was overconfident. [But] confidence is an important tool and at the moment he combines that with an incredibly hard work rate. He’s quite complete but for him now it’s all about consistency.”

Compared with Liverpool’s three regular midfielders so far this season (Alexis Mac Allister, Ryan Gravenberch and Dominik Szoboszlai), Jones has played an awful lot less.

But despite clocking at least 450 less minutes than any of those three, Jones is outperforming them all in terms of goal contributions.

With the injuries hopefully behind him, it will be fascinating to see whether Curtis can now break into Slot’s regular starting XI.