Alberto Moreno was photographed recently standing on a hoverboard while being dragged around a Liverpool park by his bull terrier, as you do. “It’s so I can save my legs for the football,” he protests, jokingly. “It was like I was a Roman gladiator on a chariot!” And one who has felt liberated since Jürgen Klopp replaced Brendan Rodgers as manager.

The Spain international started the season with “an inner rage” as Liverpool’s former manager selected the young summer signing Joe Gomez, a right-footer, at left-back for the opening five games. Moreno stated his case with a fine display on his first outing of the campaign in Bordeaux, albeit at wing-back, but it is only since Gomez was struck down by a cruciate injury and Klopp arrived at Anfield that the 23-year-old has regained his natural place. His early performances under the German coach have been a vast improvement on his debut season at Anfield, a superb penalty box tackle on Sadio Mané in last Sunday’s draw with Southampton serving as a timely reminder of Moreno’s previously maligned defensive quality.

Is the Premier League the world’s most exciting? Not this season | Paul Wilson Read more

“I don’t know why I’ve improved to tell you the truth, it is hard to explain,” the full-back admits. “I just get the impression [from Klopp] that he really feels the game. He has a huge passion for the game, which I think I do. He wants you to express yourself on the field. He wants you to offer not 100% but 200% when you are performing and I think I offer that. It fits in with me.

“He talks with me a lot. I feel he trusts me. He spends a lot of time with me. He really wants me to learn English as quickly as possible so he can get his ideas over. I have to brush up on my English! At the moment Lucas Leiva is acting as the translator for me. I am studying English for one or two hours a day four times a week but it’s a bit boring. But the fact he has spent so much time with me, I think, shows up in good performances on the field. He tells me to get forward, to be attack-minded. When I am defending, he tells me to be aggressive and stay tight to the person that I am marking. When I am going forward, don’t be scared or play with tension. Be relaxed.”

The inference is clear – Moreno did not feel the same level of trust from Rodgers. With good reason, too. The £12m signing from Sevilla was presented as an example of the dysfunction at Liverpool when Rodgers was sacked this month. He was a transfer committee signing, not that of a manager who wanted Ryan Bertrand instead.

“I perhaps felt that he didn’t have quite so much confidence in me, certainly at the start of the season,” Moreno says. “He told me I was training hard but then I didn’t feature for those first five games. He said to me that it was still early in the season and that my opportunity would come but after the first game against Stoke, when we kept a clean sheet, he said he wasn’t going to change anything defensively at that point. But he did say the chance would come.

“It never entered my head that I was going to leave, I am staying here, that is for sure, but I was angry when I was out the team. I had this inner anger, a rage almost. I felt I was playing well, training well. He told me that I was training well but I couldn’t see why I wasn’t getting a chance at the beginning of the season.”

Managerial trust is not the only change Moreno has noticed in the three weeks since Klopp arrived at Anfield. Defensive training has also altered at Melwood, although the left-back dismisses the suggestion his personal improvement stems from a few words from the former Borussia Dortmund coach.

“I haven’t just learned to defend under Klopp,” he says. “I have been defending since I was a kid and learned the art of defending before he arrived. But what is true is that he spends a lot of time on the training field on how we set up – not just defensively but also where we are position-wise in the middle of the field and also in attack. Each training session is quite tactical. We cover a lot of positioning work and strategy as well. I think perhaps you can start to see that on the field where we are working as one and seem united as a group now.”

Moreno brought Anfield to its feet with a perfectly timed and executed tackle on Mané as the Southampton forward raced through on Sunday. It rates alongside last season’s goal at Tottenham Hotspur as a highlight of the Spaniard’s brief Liverpool career.

He reflects: “I love it when something like that happens. When the fans get behind you and congratulate you for a good piece of play like the tackle, it’s amazing. It’s almost why you go out on the field to perform well and do things well for the fans. The other reason I go out on the field is to defend well and put in challenges like that. I know that my first job is to defend and I think this year I’m much better defensively.”

That assertion will be put to the test at Stamford Bridge on Saturday where, for all the problems and pressure facing José Mourinho, Moreno expects a formidable reaction from Chelsea. “You have to remember this is still Chelsea we are talking about, we’re still talking about the current champions. They’ve still got one of the best managers around and still got a squad packed with great players, so just when you least expect it they will recover their form and go shooting up the league table – and that will happen very soon.”