Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain has insisted that he is prepared to bide his time before becoming a Liverpool regular after being handed his long-awaited first Premier League start for the club at the weekend.
The £35m summer signing from Arsenal has taken time to settle into his new Anfield surroundings, featuring from the off in just three of his 12 outings in all competitions to date.
Oxlade-Chamberlain got off the mark with his first top-flight goal of the campaign in the 4-1 win against West Ham United on Saturday and, after also impressing from the bench in recent weeks, he has now targeted a regular first-team spot.
"It's never easy coming into a new team with as much quality as we've got here," he told the club's official website. "It takes time to settle in and learn a new formation and style of play. I've had to be patient; I'd have liked to have played as much as I can, that's natural.
"The only thing I can do when I get the chance is try to impress and help the team to win, with goals and creating chances. I'm going to keep trying to do that and keep pushing for starting places, just as everyone else will. That's the best thing - competition for places. The most important thing is that we're winning.
"I'm happy with the result and obviously it was nice to start as well. The manager said it could be a great week and it was up to us how good the week would be, and how nice the next week will be. We knew we had to win and we wanted to win.
"We wanted to finish on 19 points by the end of the game. The boys were right on it all the way through the game to get that done. It's the international break now - we can go away and regroup and then hit the ground running again."
Oxlade-Chamberlain has now accrued 255 league minutes in a Liverpool top, compared to 242 during his three matches for Arsenal earlier this season.
