Klopp says new signing had a ‘super game’; urges Liverpool to give winger ball ‘more often’

Jurgen Klopp picked out one Liverpool player who had a “super game” against LASK and named another he wished would have been given the ball “a little bit more often”.

The Reds fell behind after Klopp made 11 changes to his starting lineup, but second half goals from Darwin Nunez, Luis Diaz and Mohamed Salah secured a comfortable 3-1 victory in the end.

Asked about the players who came into the starting XI, Klopp picked out new signing Ryan Gravenberch for special praise and was frustrated at academy product Ben Doak not being given the ball more to have an impact.

Klopp said: “If we would have used Ben Doak a little bit more often, given him the ball, I think he would have got the ball more times on the touchline and passed the ball inside or whatever.

“Stefan [Bajcetic] found a way into the game after a rather difficult start, but we caused him problems obviously with the timing of our passes.

“Ryan [Gravenberch] played a super game in really difficult circumstances and was really decisive for us.

“Ibou [Konate] could get 80 minutes I think, Stefan could get minutes. So there were so many positives and I am cheeky enough to be really happy about that game.”

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Klopp also warned that those expecting Liverpool to “fly through” the Europa League will be disappointed.

He added: “I know how the world is and I know that people expect us to fly through this competition. It will not happen,’ Klopp said after Liverpool’s win.

“It will not happen in the group stage, it will not happen in the knockout stage. It will not happen.

“We have to dig into it and that’s what we did. It was a massive learning curve tonight, the opponent suffered much less from the pitch than we did, which is a little bit normal because we had the ball more often. But besides that we had to get used to it. So we can learn so much.”