FIRMINO AND SON HAVE CHANGED THE GAME FOR EVER

HOW wrong can you be? Watching Roberto Firmino charge around against Porto on Tuesday night, I thought back to the initial opinion that I formed when he arrived in England.

Firmino, at the beginning of the 2015-16 season, looked to be a player with a nice touch and a fair bit of skill. But I felt liverpool had signed someone from Hoffenheim who would end up getting no more than 10 goals and would turn out to be a typical player.

I’ve played with plenty of down the years.

My definition of the term Real Madrid used to describe their superstar signings was reserved for individuals who had great skill and could win you a game in a flash.

As far as defending went, however, you wouldn’t get a thing from them. Robert Prosinecki at Portsmouth was a prime example. What a player — and what a character. He smoked about 50 cigarettes a day, but it never stopped him doing unbelievable things with the ball. As a young kid starting out, it was a joy to be on his team.

He is from Croatia and that led to some language issues.

It was strange. He could understand everything we said perfectly when we were on the attack but when we were screaming at him to get back and help us defend, Robert always said he couldn’t understand what we were saying.

But we would forgive him. Why? We knew that if he was asked to go and win us the game, that’s exactly what he would do. It used to be the same for every team back then — eight or nine players would do the hard work, the other two or three would be left to get the points.

I’m sure you could reel off plenty of other names. david ginola was one who would give so much to his team’s attack. You would love to watch him going forward but you would accept that he’d leave the other side of the game alone. That’s just how it was and nobody complained. Not any more. Football has altered dramatically due to the relentless workrate of men such as Firmino ( left) and Son Heung- min of Tottenham, who is one of the top players in the league. He would improve any of the best teams. These are forwards who won’t stop. look at Firmino. He is a top goalscorer with 22 already this season, but the thing that blows me away is what happens when he loses the ball. Straight away he’s on his feet and gets it back. He must be an absolute nightmare for defenders to handle.

It says everything about how much he runs that he’s covered 165 miles in the Premier league this season. It’s the same with Son (129 miles), who is so underrated. He shouldn’t be because he’s every bit as important to Tottenham as Harry Kane and Christian Eriksen.

They are part of a new breed of footballers who are changing expectations. When we played Manchester City last October, Mark Hughes told me about a conversation he had had with Pep guardiola straight after the game, which had ended with City winning 7-2.

guardiola said it was easy for him to get his message across about playing with high intensity, pressing high up the pitch to get the ball back quickly, because of david Silva and Kevin de Bruyne; they are City’s most gifted players but they are arguably their hardest workers, too.

If they are prepared to put in the yards, how can anyone else make excuses for not doing the same?

What’s more, the demands that guardiola, Jurgen Klopp and Mauricio Pochettino put on their players means it is becoming harder for teams such as us to get results against the big boys.

going back a few years, we knew at Stoke we would work harder than anyone when we played at home. Teams found it difficult to match us and that’s why we enjoyed some big results, but now there are no guarantees that hard work will get any reward.

To cope with this brand, we as a profession have never had to be fitter. Training in the past used to be about long runs, covering endless laps of the training ground, but now it is explosive; short, sharp exercises and little three-against- three games in which you never stop sprinting.

If you want to beat these teams, you have to join them in terms of matching them for effort. The days when everyone wanted to play in that ‘free role’ — the one that meant you didn’t have to do any work — are over.

Firmino, Son and the other running men have seen to that.