Fabio Carvalho On Liverpool Opportunity: “I’ve Got to Step Up”

After struggling through ongoing injury crises in midfield and defence, Liverpool’s fitness problems have moved into the attack in recent weeks with first Luis Diaz and then Diogo Jota ruled out through at least the World Cup.

While it’s a setback for a side still trying to fully find their feet and form, it’s also perhaps an opportunity for some of the Reds’ promising young players to step up, and in the case of the attack in particular it should mean more minutes for Fabio Carvalho.

“I’ve got to step up when needed,” Carvalho said. “Whether I start or come on, I just need to be able to come on and produce. You want to come to Liverpool to play with the best and play on the biggest stage, which is what the game was the other day.

“But we’ll just keep building our momentum. We enjoyed the win because we deserved it, so we kind of celebrated, but we have to focus on West Ham because they’re a tough team to play against so we’re just focused on that now.”

Momentum can be difficult to gauge, easy to lose, and its exact importance hard to define, but after beating Manchester City with their best performance of the season—and after a mid-week 7-1 thumping of Rangers—it feels as though the Reds have it.

Next opponents West Ham, though, are a difficult challenge, consistent challengers for the European places in recent seasons even if as with Liverpool the London Hammers have rather struggled to start their own 2022-23 campaign.

“We played against Rangers really well and took that momentum on to City,” Carvalho added. “We just keep building and building and we’ll get our confidence back. We’ve done the homework [on West Ham], so hopefully we’ll put on a good show.”