In the first-floor reception space of Liverpool’s Kirkby coaching centre, Alisson Becker is posing for images with the membership’s participant of the month award for October.

It says one thing concerning the aspect’s latest performances that their goalkeeper is the person accumulating the prize. Alisson has been busy. Far busier than he or Liverpool would have appreciated.

Jurgen Klopp’s aspect head into Sunday’s conflict with Tottenham in ninth place having misplaced twice as many Premier League video games as in the entire of final season. They are eight factors behind fourth-placed Newcastle. Fifteen factors behind leaders Arsenal.

If not for Alisson, they’d be even worse off.

While others have toiled, Alisson has been, to make use of Klopp’s time period, distinctive. And that is even by his requirements. The underlying knowledge exhibits he has conceded almost seven targets fewer than he ought to have, primarily based on the standard and amount of pictures he has confronted.

“When you look at that, it’s obviously something positive,” Alisson tells Sky Sports. “I do not imagine you need to depend on statistics to know in case you are performing properly or not, however they’re a very good signal and a very good indication of the way in which you need to comply with.

“I don’t give myself too much praise because of that, because of having good numbers, but obviously it’s something that makes me happy.” Alisson pauses, smiling. “The numbers never lie.”

Alisson has proved a transformative signing since his £67m arrival from Roma in 2018, lifting “every possible trophy”, in his phrases, in addition to a number of particular person accolades which incorporates two Golden Gloves and FIFA’s finest males’s goalkeeper award in 2019.

And but, even within the context of Liverpool’s chaotic season, during which so lots of their normally dependable performers are struggling to search out type, Alisson appears to be like to be discovering new ranges.

Does he really feel on the prime of his recreation?

“I think so, yes, but I’m not doing anything alone,” he says.

“Even if the team is not performing at the very best, the fact that I’m doing this is because I have help. I cannot do things alone on the pitch. The players are trying, they are fighting together with me.

“I’m glad about my performances, however on the similar time I’m hoping that we as a workforce will return to the identical monitor that we have been on final season as a result of what we did final season was wonderful.

“We have that as a target and for myself as well, to be as good as I was in the last season and, if possible, get even better.”

‘Stick collectively, preserve combating’

The reality, although, is that Alisson can solely achieve this a lot.

Liverpool’s collective malaise has seen them concede the primary objective in eight out of 12 Premier League matches this season, with Saturday’s 2-1 loss to Leeds simply the most recent instance. The qualities that turned them into such a power beneath Klopp – depth, resilience, ruthlessness – have solely appeared sporadically.

It has left onlookers puzzled. How can a aspect beat Manchester City one week then lose to Nottingham Forest and Leeds, two relegation candidates, the subsequent? Alisson is extra serious about fixing the issues than what lies behind them.

“As players, we don’t have too much time and we try not to spend too much of it thinking about these things,” he says. “I think people from outside will always talk more, but we need action.

“We want to coach, we have to put together. We can’t keep solely taking a look at what we did improper within the video games. We have to organize for the subsequent recreation and the subsequent opponent.

“We know things change quick in football, so we just have to stick together, keep fighting and keep trying to do good performances.”

And, in fact, discover a solution to do it persistently somewhat than in patches. “That is something we all have in common, something we all agree on, that we have to find our consistency again,” he says.

Everybody expects to see us rating one, two or three targets within the first 20 minutes. We are doing the other

“Everybody is used to seeing it in our team. We, the players, and the people as well. A consistent Liverpool, conceding only a few goals, keeping clean sheets, scoring, winning games.

“Everybody expects to see us rating one, two or three targets within the first 20 minutes, however now we’re doing the other.

“Of course, when you concede first and you win, it’s a sign of a strong mentality. That is important as well.

“But we all know that, to search out consistency, we have now to cease conceding first, as a result of, at all times, it is a knock to the arrogance of the workforce.

“That is one thing we agree on, but we don’t focus too much on the problem, because then we are not focused on the right thing. We focus on the solutions. We speak between us, with the manager, and we try to put on the pitch everything we discuss and prepare.”

Failure to do this in opposition to Spurs on Sunday will see the strain ramp up additional however Alisson shrugs when requested about the potential of latest scrutiny and criticism persevering with to mount.

“It is part of football,” he says, smiling once more. “It is not something that is easy to deal with. But we have all played football for a while now and I personally understand that this is part of it.

“You are going to have strain from the surface world, from the supporters, from the media. Only taking part in for an enormous membership are you going to have this sort of strain.

“I see it as normal, but we have to fight back, and our response has to be on the pitch with performances. What we can’t do is let the criticism affect us and bring us down more.”

They cannot let it dent their perception both. Alisson insists he and his team-mates have little doubt they will get again to the place they have been. They are helped, he says, by having been via all this earlier than.

“We always have belief,” he says. “We have the understanding that things are not going so well for us so far. We have to be realistic. We have to be humble as well, to accept it, to fight more, and to recognise what is going wrong and to change it.

“But that’s a part of our workforce, being humble, combating. We know that generally we can’t be the perfect on the pitch, however we would be the ones who battle probably the most. This is what we have now accomplished to this point and it labored out in different seasons for us.

“We can’t forget, as well, the season we had before the last one, when we had to fight a lot. We struggled in the competition because of injuries, because of outside circumstances, but we came back.

“So, we have now sufficient expertise to take care of these sorts of issues, we simply must do it.”

Alisson, in fact, performed a much bigger function than most in Liverpool’s restoration that season, his astonishing headed objective of their 2-1 win over West Brom on the Hawthorns serving to Klopp’s aspect clinch a Champions League spot.

“People still tag me on Twitter or Instagram on the video of that goal,” he says with a chuckle. “It was something incredible, one of the best feelings I’ve had in my life, scoring that goal, and for all it represented for the team at that moment.”

It was an instance, too, of how Alisson’s affect at Liverpool stretches far past his shot-stopping alone.

The Brazilian has made extra profitable passes than some other goalkeeper since his arrival within the Premier League. There have even been three assists, all for Mohamed Salah, the most recent of which got here together with his gorgeous lengthy cross deep into Manchester City territory at Anfield three weeks in the past.

“It’s something I work on, but not every day, because kicking long balls like that demands a lot of you physically,” he says. “It’s more about me knowing Mo and Mo knowing me.

“So, I do know the place he runs, I do know he is quick, I do know his qualities, and I’ve the qualities as properly which are wanted to place the ball behind the opponent’s defensive position.

“I would like to train it more, to be honest, but we don’t have enough time. We have too many games, one after the other.”

‘Taffarel greater than a coach’

The time that Alisson does get on the coaching subject is spent with Claudio Taffarel, his idol, shut buddy and, as of final November, full-time Liverpool goalkeeping coach, shut at hand.

Alisson grew up admiring Taffarel, a World Cup-winning Brazil legend who even began his profession at Internacional, the identical Porto Alegre membership as him. He now counts the 56-year-old, the person he calls ‘Tafa’, as his mentor in addition to one among his greatest footballing influences.

“Tafa is someone that has a big impact on my life and my career before he was even my goalie coach, because of everything that he was as a goalkeeper and for everything he did for the Brazilian national team,” says Alisson.

“That was always enough to admire him, but then, in the national team, we started to work together, and I could see that the qualities he had as a goalkeeper, he has as a goalie coach as well.

“I at all times felt good engaged on him within the nationwide workforce, even when it was just for brief durations of time, and I at all times imaged how good it might be to work with him daily.”

Me and Tafa, we are actually associates as properly. I love him in each means attainable. I can see him as a buddy, as a goalie coach, as a legend, and as a household man

That alternative arose final 12 months, when the membership expressed a willingness to behave on his suggestion of hiring Taffarel to work with current goalkeeping coaches John Achterberg and Jack Robinson.

“When I signed my new contract with the club last year, I had won the goalkeeper of the year already, and every trophy possible, but I still wanted to improve,” explains Alisson, who will head to the World Cup in Qatar later this month as Brazil’s No 1.

“That’s still the case now. I’m only 30, so I have a long way in front of me, and bringing Tafa, together with John and Jack, has given us a really good mix.

“We have John’s expertise in English soccer, the identical as Jack. They helped me massively to settle in right here and to grasp Premier League soccer, to grasp the membership, to grasp the nation. They helped me to enhance as properly.

“Now, having them together with Tafa, is something amazing. Then, me and Tafa, we are now friends as well. I admire him in every way possible. I can see him as a friend, as a goalie coach, as a legend, and as a family man.”

Taffarel’s arrival has reworked Alisson’s means of working.

Like Alisson, Taffarel spent a lot of his taking part in profession in Europe, however his teaching strategies are extra typical of his native nation, with extra of a spotlight, Alisson explains, on method.

“The main reason I wanted to have him here was because of the methodology of goalkeeper coaching in Brazil. It’s something that I grew up with, but it changed when I came to Europe.

“When I went to Italy, it modified from Brazil, and after I got here to England, it modified from Italy. There are some similarities, however I at all times felt that I wished to have that form of coaching again.

“Brazilian goalkeeper technique, I feel, is one of the best in the world and we are good for a reason; because we have really good goalie coaches who work in a way that makes us improve every day, and not only in the technical aspect, but the physical as well.

“It is a extremely intense form of work. I’m not somebody who spends an excessive amount of time within the health club. I love to do energy and energy on the pitch with the ball. So, the way in which he works helps me on that as properly.”

Recent proof exhibits past all doubt that it’s paying off.

This season has introduced challenges few anticipated for Liverpool. Klopp has points to handle. But his goalkeeper is just not one among them. Alisson, already sensible, simply retains getting higher.

Watch Tottenham vs Liverpool stay on Sky Sports Premier League from 3.30pm on Sunday; kick-off 4.30pm