Arriving at Anderlecht on transfer deadline day in January, Liverpool’s Lazar Markovic was deemed very unfit by the Belgian side’s medical staff, and a special program was set up for him.
Predicted to take up to five weeks to be ready to feature in the first-team, the Serbian international made his debut for his loan club at the end of February, coming off the bench for 20 minutes in a 5-3 win against Royal Excel Mouscron.
Featuring once more in Hein Vanhaezebrouck’s squad against Zulte Waregem, Markovic is now slowly but surely getting back to match fitness, just in time for the Jupiler Pro League playoffs.
The problem for Anderlecht is, they still don’t know what kind of player they are going to get: will it be the starlet Liverpool bought from Benfica, or will it be the winger who struggled at Hull City?
That’s the question Sport/Foot ask this week in their magazine, and they decided to have a chat with the Liverpool loanee’s brother, Filip Markovic, a striker at RC Lens in Ligue 2 in France.
From his point of view, the early signs suggest it’s good news for the Belgians.
He said: “I saw Lazar in the game against Mouscron. I saw a lot of details that suggested he was happy. Why wouldn’t he stay longer at Anderlecht. He still has a year left at Liverpool. If he’s happy here, Anderlecht should try and keep him beyond this season”.
Of course, before that happens, they need to figure out if he’d be worth the money Liverpool would demand, and for that he needs to perform.
With a spot in Serbia’s World Cup squad to play for, he’s got everything to gain from putting his head down and convincing his new manager he should be starting.
For his brother, he reckons he can do it: “I reckon he has a real chance of going. The national team manager knows him: they played together at Partizan.
“During their last meeting, he just advised him to get minutes. I’m pretty certain Krstajic will choose him if he gets his level back”.
Therein lies the problem, as Markovic has never shown he can reproduce his Benfica form, and for Filip, that’s partly down to him giving up too soon at Liverpool.
He continued: “I think my brother made a mistake. He should have persevered at Anfield instead of asking to be loaned out so quickly”.
Yet, to be fair to the Liverpool forward, his first loan spell started off well at Fenerbahce, but an injury to his groin was the start of the decline to the player we’ve all come to know in England.
This chance Anderlecht are giving him seems like the perfect opportunity to turn things around.
