Swansea’s Jonjo Shelvey returns to Anfield to take on former club Liverpool on Monday Night Football

Jonjo Shelvey returns to Anfield still looking to fulfil his huge potential, writes Adam Bate.

Throughout history there have always been those games in which great players overshadow the contest itself, moulding it to their whim: Diego Maradona’s impact for Argentina against England in 1986 or Roy Keane’s heroic efforts against Juventus in the Champions League semi-final in 1999.

These players don’t so much take part in a game but take it over. And yet, even the greats cannot claim to have performed the feat with quite such distinctive showmanship as Jonjo Shelvey managed to do in his first game against former club Liverpool last season.

In September 2013, the Swansea midfielder fired in the opening goal within four minutes only to play a careless backpass to allow Liverpool to equalise and then inexplicably surrender possession once again for the Reds to take the lead. Balance was restored when he set up Michu for the equaliser in a 2-2 draw that left the 21 other participants reduced to roles in the Shelvey show.

It was a testament to his character that his final contribution should be a positive one. Then Swansea boss Michael Laudrup preferred to accentuate the positive, praising his second-half recovery and refusal to hide away, while insisting that Shelvey would “become stronger out of this” experience. And yet, it was also a player laying bare the weaknesses that remained in his game.

When you see him every day and work closely with him, the quality Jonjo has is frightening. I think we have only seen about 50 per cent of what he can do.

Brendan Rodgers, who’d tipped Shelvey for a “big future” and even singled him out for a “prominent role” at Liverpool just months before selling him, hinted at these issues in his own post-match assessment. “Jonjo Shelvey is an outstanding young player, but he knows he has things in his game he needs to improve on. He will only do that from playing. This was a steep learning curve for him.”

Fifteen months on and that just about sums up where Shelvey is in his career at the moment. Garry Monk is now the man charged with bringing the best out of the player. Just as Kenny Dalglish had done when throwing Shelvey into the Liverpool first-team following a loan spell at Blackpool, Monk recognises the talent that the midfielder possesses. Harnessing it is the challenge.

Monk's weekend plea for Shelvey to cut out the laziness suggests that's easier said than done. "I will push him every single day, but you also need to want it yourself," said Monk following an underwhelming performance from the midfielder against Aston Villa on Boxing Day. "I think he does want it, but he also needs to understand the time for being lazy with it is gone." Fortunately, it seems the Swansea boss isn't ready to give up on the player just yet.

“When you see him every day and work closely with him, the quality Jonjo has is frightening,” said Monk, quoted in the South Wales Evening Post earlier this month. “I think we have only seen about 50 per cent of what he can do. We need to get him in the right place physically and mentally to be able to do it. He is still very young, which a lot of people tend to forget because he has been around for so long.

"He might just need to do a bit of growing up in terms of the maturity in hi