Lucas Leiva believes Lazar Markovic can become a key player

Serb has made steady progress at Anfield in recent weeks, says Brazilian midfielder


Lucas Leiva believes Lazar Markovic can become an important player in Liverpool’s future – and says the Serb is improving all the time at Anfield.

Markovic picked up his first Premier League goal with the winner at Sunderland on Saturday, and has made steady progress since being elevated into Brendan Rodgers’ starting line-up last month.

He has started five of the Reds’ last seven games in all competitions, performing well in a wing-back role.

Rodgers spoke glowingly about the 20-year-old after the weekend’s win, and Lucas too is convinced that Markovic will go on to be a key player in years to come.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.

“These 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.”

Lucas himself produced an impressive display in the win at Sunderland, despite rumours linking the midfielder with a move to Italian giants Inter Milan.

Rodgers is understood to be reluctant to allow the 28-year-old to leave this month but for now Lucas is just focusing on his job at Anfield.

He said: “It’s good to win away from home and keep a clean sheet at a difficult place to come to.

“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.”


By Neil Jones / Liverpool Echo