Ryan Gravenberch aims subtle dig at former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp

Ryan Gravenberch appeared to take a subtle swipe at former manager Jurgen Klopp as he thanked Arne Slot for showing full faith in him immediately after arriving as manager during the summer.

Klopp signed Gravenberch from Bayern Munich in 2023 but named the midfielder in a Premier League starting line-up just 12 times over the course of last season.

The Dutchman has started all six of the Reds' games in the top flight so far this term and has established himself as one of Slot's undroppable players with a series of impressive performances in the No.6 role.

Gravenberch has operated as a deep-lying midfielder throughout the campaign after Liverpool missed out on signing primary target Martin Zubimendi during the transfer window, and he expressed his gratitude to Slot after Saturday's 2-1 win over Wolves.

"This season I wanted to show myself again and I am really happy. He put me in the starting 11 and gave me a lot of confidence. I think a team like Liverpool always has to be in the top four," Gravenberch told Sky Sports. "We keep pushing but it’s still really early. We knew this was always going to be difficult for us. I think after 20 or 25 minutes we did really well and we got the three points so I’m really happy with that.

"We gave the equaliser away because of miscommunication. This can happen in football but it won't happen again. We always try to push and we had a lot of chances. Maybe in the last phase of the game we could have scored one more. But at the end of the day we still won. I think we lost a lot of concentration, myself included. We won but we have to learn from what we missed today. We have to get better."

Slot, meanwhile, praised the young midfielder for his off-the-ball qualities after he claimed another Player of the Match award at Molineux. "[It's] not only me [who is happy with Gravenberch], I think all fans are as well - and him too! He's just very comfortable on the ball, with Macca (Alexis Mac Allister) as well and that helps the team if you want to have a possession style of play.

"If you want to have the ball and you want to keep it for as long as you can, it always helps if you have two players who are so comfortable on the ball in the holding midfielder position, and the two of them if they can run as well.

"If you think of the things that Ryan does with the ball, we don't do enough justice to his game. He does a really good job without the ball as well which surprised even me, because I know him from the Dutch league, but I think Bayern and Jurgen did a good job making him better without the ball and that's what we are taking the benefits of right now."

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