You missed several months of this season through the injury you sustained against Manchester City FC. How bad was it?

You could describe the injury I suffered before the World Cup as the worst of my career. As well as coming at the worst moment possible in the lead up to a huge competition, it was also a genuinely complex injury.

At least that’s what they told me, I’m not an expert on the matter. It was an injury they had not seen before here at Liverpool and I was referred to a Spanish specialist.

I tried to understand what had happened and why, and most importantly started the recovery to be back playing as quickly as possible. It was about four months, which is the longest absence in my career and the frustration was only increased by being at home with the bad results not helping.

The feeling was always to get back as soon as possible to try to help improve the situation. Now I’m finally back, I hope Liverpool can get back to playing the way we used to last season and I am trying to get momentum in this final part of the season.

Do you prefer playing through the middle or as one of the wider forwards?

Probably last season I played more as a striker whereas this season I have been playing more on the left. That changes a little bit what you can do.

Sometimes I score more goals than the others, sometimes I assist more than the others. Even if I am not scoring it is important to be there and create chances, either with the final touch or with the first touch.

I like to play wherever the manager feels good to play me. I’ve played in the centre, on the right and the left. I just want to be in the team and to try my best to influence the team.

Why hasn’t this season been as good as last season for Liverpool FC?

Last season was almost perfect. If we could change the scores in the last two games, we would be in history forever, but now this season has been quite the opposite.

My view is, from the beginning, the season never started for me properly because I came into pre-season injured. It wasn’t just me, we had other injuries as well that could potentially explain why we could not get momentum this season. It’s hard to say, but we will fight until the end to get the best outcome.

Have there been conversations about why this season hasn’t gone to plan for the team?

Yes, we’ve spoken a lot. I believe the manager said in an interview that we’ve had a lot of ‘emergency’ meetings, you could say.

It means that things haven’t been working out as we’ve been used to, especially compared to last season. It’s therefore difficult for all of us to understand why this season has been the way it has.

The most important thing now with the remaining games ahead of us is to finish in the best possible position. This will provide us with the best possible foundations for the start of next season.

With Roberto Firmino due to leave at the end of the season are you concerned a new striker will arrive and make it harder to get into the team?

In football there are cycles and everything has an end in life. When I joined people were telling me Liverpool had probably the best front three in the world and how can you get into the team? But in football and life things come to an end.

Everything has cycles and people leave for different reasons. Bobby has chosen to leave and we need to give him respect for that.

At a club like Liverpool, even when big players leave, we have big names coming in. It is part of Liverpool and football in general so it is massively difficult sometimes to get into the team, but we also have a lot of games and know we will get a chance. It is up to us to take those chances more often than not.