Two separate injuries<\/a> affected him. A hamstring issue last September sidelined him for seven weeks, while a thigh problem in December kept him out for a further two months.<\/p>\nThat denied Alexander-Arnold the sustained run of games needed to build momentum and a connection with supporters.<\/p>\n
Overall, he featured in 35 of Real Madrid’s 62 matches across all competitions last season, but was not first choice, starting 27 times as he shared the right-back role with club legend Dani Carvajal.<\/p>\n
However, the defensive doubts that plagued him throughout his Liverpool career remained part of the conversation in Madrid – even as his quality in possession continued to stand out. <\/p>\n
He showed glimpses of his undoubted ability, but there was a feeling among some supporters that they had not yet seen enough of Alexander-Arnold to judge his impact.<\/p>\n
By the end of a season which had Xabi Alonso and Alvaro Arbeloa in charge of Real as they failed to win a major trophy, he had begun to show signs of his best form – finishing the campaign strongly before thanking supporters for their backing in a message on social media.<\/p>\n
“Madridistas you have welcomed me with open arms.” he wrote. “From the first day I arrived you have had my back. It took me a few months to find rhythm and settle in the new environment but I feel completely at home now.<\/p>\n
“I will take a good break and put the work in over the summer. I promise we will bring trophies back to this amazing club next season.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Real Madrid paid Liverpool a reported 10m euros (\u00a38.4m) for Alexander-Arnold, releasing him from his contract on 1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":848828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-848827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=848827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/848828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}