Anfield Until The End 16/17

It's Been Nice Knowing You: João Carlos Teixeira

Another career ruined by injuries, João announced on the 12th of June that he would go to the Portuguese club FC Porto by the time his contract expired, which was the 1st of July, giving us £250,000 as compensation.

He was to be the next great thing when he came here,"the new Deco", a real great for Portugal that could help out Ronaldo actually win more than one match (Okay, Euro jokes aside). Now, he leaves hoping he can even get into the side in the near future.

João arrived in the winter of the 11-12 season, but with a back injury. He almost never came because of this, as he was out for a long amount of months for the brace he needed to stay in to heal his back.

In the 12-13 season, he featured regularly in the U21s side and did much of the same in the next season, although he went on loan to Brighton for a good portion. Because of his successful loan in that season, he was awarded the Acadamy Player of the Year.

The next season, he was loaned to Brentford, but didn't make as big as an impact as he or Liverpool would have wanted, making only two appearances. Still, this is not honestly his fault as Brentford slipped down the table in League One, no longer being able to give him the minutes needed as results were needed first and foremost to not get relegated rather than sacrifice the club for a teenager to get a few minutes. As such, his loan was terminated and he was brought back to Liverpool in October. Later on in the season he did get his first senior team debut and helped in winning a penalty against Fulham, creating the move which got Sturridge fouled. With the game won by this penalty, he received praise from Steven Gerrard and Brendan Rodgers.

For the 14-15 season, he was loaned to Brighton again, doing very well throughout the season and getting top goalscorer for the club in the league with six goals and Brighton's Young Player of the Year. Sadly, things went bad quickly as in a match that eventual ended up being a scoreless draw, he had his leg broken in a horrible challenge. He didn't play for the rest of the season after April.

It's a bit confusing why Klopp let him go. Maybe in the only two appearances he made, Klopp knew he wasn't a good fit. And that was probably due to him not getting enough play time in the crucial development stages of his footballing career. Remember, he's only a year younger than Firmino and Coutinho and you compare that to what he does, it's glaringly obvious that he didn't develop enough or "The Next Deco" stuff was merely youngster hype.

YNWA, João. Try to be the best footballer you can be at Porto.