Lovren Backs Marko Grujić for Liverpool Return

In the year and a half that Marko Grujić spent at Liverpool before being loaned out to Cardiff City, he didn’t exactly make the strongest of impressions. Managing just fifty two minutes of Premier League football, all of which came from the bench, it was clear that Jürgen Klopp’s side had no immediate need for him, and a temporary switch to another club seemed a perfectly sensible decision with the potential for him to be sold in the summer.

We might all want to pause on that last point, however. A certain Dejan Lovren, in between winning over our hearts with significantly improved performances, has been arguing for Marko Grujić’s return to the club next year. The Liverpool Echo report that he is “really glad” about the Serbian’s progress, saying that “it is going well [for him] at Cardiff and hopefully they will be in the Premier League next season”.

“He hadn’t been playing here and is still young so I think it was the right decision for him to go to Cardiff to get some minutes on the pitch. I saw his goal against Barnsley and I’m really happy for him that he is doing well there”, he told the Liverpool match programme.

“Going from the Serbian league to Premier League was a big step for him so I think the first year-and-a-half was about adaptation. Hopefully he will be fine for next season to play a big role here because I know the manager is thinking about him for the future”.

Cardiff are high flyers in this season’s Championship, looking in a strong position to secure automatic promotion to the Premier League. While the manager Neil Warnock isn’t exactly the first person you’d go to for developing talented young players, it looks as though Grujić’s physical assets have suited the South Wales side perfectly. As Dejan Lovren said, it can be difficult for a young player to make the move to England, so hopefully we could yet have a genuine player in him.