Alisson Becker believes Liverpool's confidence has finally been restored after they extended their winning run in the Premier League to five games following a hard-fought victory over Fulham.
Mohamed Salah's first-half penalty ultimately proved to be the only difference between the two sides on Wednesday evening as the Egyptian fired his 29th goal of the season after Darwin Nunez was clumsily brought down by Issa Diop shortly before the interval.
Yet despite the Reds' dominance, Alisson was called into action with 15 minutes remaining to prevent Carlos Vinicius from drawing the West Londoners level after the forward had worked space inside the penalty area to get a shot off at the Brazilian.
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A first clean sheet since the thrashing of Manchester United on March 5 and a vital victory means Liverpool are now just four points behind fourth-placed Manchester United, who make the trip to the Amex Stadium on Thursday evening to face Europa League-chasing Brighton & Hove Albion as one of their two games in hand on Jurgen Klopp's side.
And although it seems improbable that the Reds' recent upturn in form will be enough to earn them a place in the Champions League for the seventh consecutive season, Alisson believes the momentum gained from the past four weeks must be sustained if they are to completely recover from a below-par campaign at Anfield.
"Really good," said Brazilian, when assessing Wednesday's victory with Liverpoolfc.com. "In football, when you find the momentum and get the confidence you have to keep that. It’s too easy to lose and if you lose it it’s really hard to get back, everybody saw it this season.
"But we are working hard; we always said we were working hard to change our situation and here is the result. We are getting on the winning path again. Still a lot to improve but we are on the right path as a team and I really believe great things will come for us."
With Fulham's rescheduled visit to L4 sandwiched either side of fixtures against Tottenham Hotspur and Brentford, Klopp was able to ring the changes on and therefore handed starts to Kostas Tsimikas, Darwin Nunez and Jordan Henderson. However, it was the performance of the returning Luis Diaz, making just his fifth appearance since sustaining a long-term knee injury back in October, that caught the eye of the Reds' Brazilian shot-stopper.
"He is amazing," continued Alisson. "[There is] so much joy when you watch him play – and I have more joy than you because he is playing in front of me!
"It is so good to watch him play. Really skilled player, so much talent. He is helping us a lot, he is a proper threat to the opponent, the full-back has to think twice to overlap because they have Lucho behind them.
"This is something that helps our team as well, bringing quality on the ball. And he works really hard defensively as well for the team. I’m really happy for him."
He added: "Everything he went through this season was really hard; for him, for his family and for ourselves of course. So long away because of injury and wow, he came back and showed this amazing football for us.
"He is a really important player for us and hopefully he’ll keep fit and keep scoring goals and bringing joy to the people."
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