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With Trent Alexander-Arnold departing for Real Madrid, it opened up a vacancy for Bradley to establish himself in Arne Slot’s squad at the start of the new campaign, but the 22-year-old suffered an injury setback ahead of their league opener. Bradley is continuing to work his way back to full fitness, racking up six Premier League appearances and played 72 minutes in Wednesday’s 5-1 Champions League victory over Frankfurt after coming on as an early replacement for Jeremie Frimpong. International involvement has also helped Bradley get up to speed – he started in Northern Ireland’s first three World Cup qualifiers, including captaining his country in a 2-0 win over Slovakia earlier this month before missing a showdown with Germany due to suspension. Bradley has spoken about looking to improve his disciplinary record having picked up three yellow cards in the Premier League and a further two in the Champions League so far this term. Liverpool travel to Brentford on Saturday evening with an aim of ending a three-game losing league run. "It's never nice getting an injury in pre-season," Bradley told the club’s website. "Especially when I nearly got through it then I just picked up a little injury. "It's always disappointing and then it sort of kills the start of the season for you because you're ready to go into it with full fitness and then you have a setback, so it's difficult. "It's never nice but I just need to try to get my full fitness back now and try to play as many games and try to help the team as much as possible." Bradley is part of a star-studded Reds squad which was further bolstered by the £100million signing of Florian Wirtz while striker Alexander Isak arrived from Newcastle United for £125million. The likes of Frimpong, Milos Kerkez and Hugo Ekitike also joined during the summer, and Bradley feels it’ll take time for the new-look team to gel. "It definitely does take time," he added. "I think you have to build relationships, which you can't just do in one day. "That's over weeks and months and things like that. "But I think all the new lads have settled in really well. They're all really nice people first of all and obviously they're all top players from what you see online from what they've done at their previous clubs and what they're doing for us. "They're all top people, top players and I think we're really lucky to have them."
