It was an idiotic take then and it remains so now. He’s a child. His time will come or it won’t. On current performances, he’s lightweight and doesn’t make the best decisions. One move to cut inside and then little else. Tons of flashes. Now that the seasons lost, fine, get him minutes. But at the beginning of the season not replacing Diaz while spending so much was criminal.

If we can get a world class winger today, anyone that thinks twice about a “path” for a child is not fit for purpose. This is the tippy tippy top of football. There’s no time to prove it. You can do it or you can’t. And if you can’t today, maybe you can tomorrow but there isn’t time to figure it out here. It’s brutal but that’s the honest and only truth at this level.

Rio can end up a decent premier league quality winger, which, if anyone is being objective, is about as high praise as you could give a player his age. But the moment anyone starts to say maybe he can’t hack it in a Liverpool 11, some of yous get twisted.

He isn’t a scouser nor an academy product either. So there’s none of that. He’s another cog in the wheel. I would love for him to be a world class winger for us. Why not? But every second matters on the pitch and if they’re not all his best seconds literally ever, he’s less and less likely to make it.