Notts County boss Kevin Nolan praises on-loan Liverpool youngster Matty Virtue

Kevin Nolan has claimed that Matty Virtue should return to Notts County “full of confidence” after scoring for Liverpool Under-23s and believes the Reds youth captain will make successful contributions for his loan club.

Virtue bagged the first goal for Neil Critchley’s team which lost 2-1 to Porto B in the Premier League International Cup last Wednesday.

The 20-year-old, who is eligible to play games for his parent club's youth side despite being on loan, is now back at Meadow Lane.

He will be in contention for a place in the squad which faces Cheltenham in League Two on Tuesday night.

“It’s perfect and we had the same scenario with Tahvon Campbell last season in which he could also play for West Brom’s under-23s team while on loan for us,” Nolan told the Nottingham Post.

“We are hoping to build a good rapport with Liverpool so we are not going to stop him when he has a fantastic game to play in especially when he has not had 90 minutes with us. He will get minutes in his legs and we are always going to encourage that.

“Matty will be back with us and he scored a good goal. A lot of my mates are Liverpool fans and he took his goal very nicely. He will come back full of confidence and hopefully we can keep adding to that.

“People just expected Matty to come in because he was a Liverpool player and take the mantle left by Ryan Yates. It didn’t help that we weren’t going through a great patch at the time.

“Had we been winning games then it would have been seen as seamless. He’s got a bright future in the game and we don’t want to be wrecking that.

“We took him out of the firing a line a bit because people were looking at him even though he was one of the best players on the pitch when we were getting poor results.

“It won’t long before we see the best of him again and seeing him in a winning team and everybody is thinking ‘we’ve got a player here’.

“He’s a great kid and wants to learn. People have to remember it’s his first loan and he is learning every day because it’s different to academy football.

“I am sure come the end of the season he will have made a successful contribution and he will go back to Liverpool a better player.”

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