• The best left-back in the English Premier League this season, Robertson will rightly be considered an indispensable influence when Liverpool aim for glory against Tottenham inside Madrid’s Wando Metropolitano stadium on Saturday evening.
• Anyone who comes into the club will find it easy and it means they can concentrate on their game without worrying about settling in — Robertson
Image: /REUTERS
The unmistakably Scottish accent cut through the blustery winds at Liverpool’s Melwood training ground just as Mohamed Salah fired a shot over the bar.
“You idiot! It was an outburst bellowed as much in jest as frustration, yet it emphasised the voice Andy Robertson carries within Jurgen Klopp’s squad. If the Scotland captain is pinging perfect passes in front of the Egyptian superstar, then he expects them to be put away.
Approaching his second successive Champions League final, Robertson is no longer a rising newcomer among the elite performers at Anfield.
The best left-back in the English Premier League this season, he will rightly be considered an indispensable influence when Liverpool aim for glory against Tottenham inside Madrid’s Wando Metropolitano stadium on Saturday evening.
“Myself and Mo have a good relationship and he always asks during the season if I’ll give him more assists,” laughed Robertson, speaking minutes after the open training session was wrapped up.
“I put a couple on a plate for him and he kept missing! So, hopefully, he’s saving them for Saturday. Listen, we all get on great and have a good relationship, so when new guys come into the club it gets their character out very quickly. It’s an easy changing room to fit into and it’s good.”
“Anyone who comes into the club will find it easy and it means they can concentrate on their game without worrying about settling in.”
Robertson is well past that stage. Provider of 11 Premier League assists and contributor to 20 clean sheets as Liverpool came within a point of the title, he has taken another impressive step forward in performance levels.
“The expectation has been there since the start of the season — that is something that I put on myself,” admitted the 25-year-old. “Obviously, I am wee bit better known now and the fans probably expected a lot more and demanded a lot more. I hope for the most part I have managed to produce and they are happy enough with my performances. But that same expectation will be there next season.”
“Whatever happens, this will still be a good season. But when you get a chance like we have at the weekend, you have to try and take it.”
Robertson shone individually during last season’s Champions League final in Kiev, producing an outstanding challenge on Cristiano Ronaldo to save a certain goal. But that provided precisely zero consolation for an eventual 3-1 defeat at the hands of Real Madrid.
A runners-up medal was thrust into his wash-bag that night. Twelve months on, it remains an item of little regard.
“I actually still don’t know where it is, I think it’s in the kitchen,” confessed Robertson. “But look, that’s irrelevant. Hopefully, I come back with a winners’ one this time and we can maybe compare them. I could bring last year’s one out and maybe enjoy it a little more.”
Hopefully this time we have a better medal around our neck that we can celebrate. But we know how difficult it is going to be. We need to put in 100 per cent effort because we all know how good Tottenham are.”
But surely, there must be some semblance of pride in reaching Europe’s elite match at the end of his first campaign on Merseyside?
“Not yet,” he replied. “I might look back in pride at last season if we can go one step further this season. Maybe then I’ll say: ‘Do you know what? Last season wasn’t too bad’.”
“But when you are playing for this club there is a demand on you to win. That’s all you think about — winning games and trying to win trophies. We have not managed that yet and it’s something we need to try and do. We have had a couple of chances — especially since this manager came in — and it is about time that we took one.”
“But that is not me saying it is going to be this one because we know how hard it is going to be against Tottenham. We just need to keep knocking on the door, keep trying and trying. I’m sure we will produce a trophy, if not on Saturday then very soon.”
This latest opportunity arose thanks to that scarcely-believable semi-final comeback against Barcelona, when Liverpool overturned a 3-0 first-leg deficit within one of the truly great Anfield atmospheres.
Robertson’s presence was felt that night. Just ask Lionel Messi. As the Argentine genius sat on the turf, complaining about a first-minute challenge from Fabinho, Robertson ran past and gave him a little shove on the back of the head. It was viewed by some as a signal of Liverpool’s defiance.
“A lot gets made of it because it was Messi,” recalled Robertson. “He’s the best player in the world as far as I’m concerned. But I think it showed them the game that they were in, that we were ready for them and we were going to fight anyone, legally of course, who was in our way to get to the final.”
“That’s what we needed to do in terms of our fight, our passion, our pressing and our movement. We forced a very good team into making a lot of mistakes and that was our attitude all night. It was irrelevant in terms of the game, but people concentrated on it more because it was Messi.
“I was just trying to give him a shove. It was not pre-meditated and it wouldn’t have meant anything to him or affected him.”
Perhaps not. But that night meant everything to Liverpool. For Robertson, it provided another platform to become the first Scot since Paul Lambert in 1997 to win a Champions League final having played an active part.
Around 40 of his friends and family are bound for Madrid. Not all of them have tickets, but they will be bonded by belief after witnessing the Barcelona miracle.
“We know we’re not the best team in the world because we have a lot of improvements to make,” argued Robertson. “We’re a young squad and we’ll learn from experience but we believe we can beat the best teams in the world and Barcelona won’t be far away from that. Tottenham are also up there and we’ll need to show the same again, the attitude we took into Barcelona. The first game was not a 3-0 game, we performed better than the scoreline suggested.”
“That’s the confidence we took. It was going to take a perfect performance to turn the tie around and we just about produced it. Lots of people will talk about it for years to come and, hopefully, they are talking about it because it leads to being our sixth Champions League win as a club.”