"I think it took him most of last year to understand the size of Liverpool Football Club and he said some of this himself in the final couple of months of last season," he told the Echo.
"I think coming from Swansea as an ambitious, young, successful manager and stepping into the Liverpool club was overwhelming in terms of size - certainly not in terms of his ability - and I think he felt that as he went through the season he got more and more used to that. He had a fantastic second half of the season.
"Brendan is a fantastic person to work with. He's quite infectious, a great person to spend time with and he's very personable with the players. He never stops working, is always on the phone, very collaborative and we work great as a team here so we're very optimistic about this year.
"We've made some good investments in the transfer window and we will continue to look at that until the end of August."