Naby Keita is willing his old club to get over the line in the Premier League title race after Liverpool's incredible start to the season.

Arne Slot's side has been the stand-out team in England by some distance, leading second-placed Chelsea in the table by seven points and having a game in hand over the Stamford Bridge club. And Keita, who made 18 appearances when Liverpool won the Premier League for the first time in 2019-20, is hoping to see the team's good run continue in the second half of the campaign.

"It's very interesting, they are in a good dynamic. I believe that if they continue like this, they can make a surprise," Keita told Sportsboom.com. "But yes, I would say it's not a surprise because they deserve it. They are in great form and are playing good football at the moment. And I hope that at the end of the Premier League season, they can win the title."

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Meanwhile, it was recently revealed that former Reds boss Jurgen Klopp played a key role in finding Keita a new club after his Werder Bremen career was effectively ended in acrimonious fashion. Keita joined Bremen on a free transfer in 2023 but was exiled in April of this year after refusing to travel to an away game against Bayer Leverkusen after discovering that he would not be starting the match.

The Guinean has not played for Bremen since and will join Hungarian club Ferencvaros on loan in January, with Ferencvaros having an option to make the move permanent next summer. Ferencvaros' sporting director, Tamas Hajnal, played under former Liverpool manager Klopp at Borussia Dortmund and got in touch with the German to find out his thoughts on Keita.

"I spoke to Jurgen Klopp about it and he was actually incredibly positive," Hajnal said. "He said in German that he was a 'weltklasse spieler', meaning a 'world-class player'. He spoke very positively about him, that when his health allowed it, he was always a key player for him. He didn't say anything about his personality that would actually be a problem. So that also confirmed for us that it was worth continuing to look into it and going even deeper.

"Expectations should not be set too high at first. We have taken care of this in the contractual structure. We are taking relatively few risks with this, so we think that the positive impact we can achieve with this can be really huge if everyone can get the most out of it together."