21 September 2023 , 21:02
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Jurgen Klopp wants his players to give Ben Doak the ball "a little more often" after the 17-year-old's superb display against LASK.
Liverpool recovered from a goal down to beat the Austrian side 3-1 on Thursday evening thanks to goals from Darwin Nunez, Luis Diaz and Mohamed Salah. It was Klopp's 50th win as Reds boss, although he doesn't think his team will breeze through the Europa League.
Klopp has now won more European games than ANY Liverpool manager in history. He's above all-time greats of Bob Paisley, Bill Shankly and Joe Fagan, but modest Klopp admitted that - despite reaching the same number of finals as the legendary Paisley - he will be hated if he fails to add to his total this season.
"We have played a lot of games in Europe, but it is good we have won that many and we have frequently qualified for finals," he said. No, honestly, it’s great but probably because the competition now has so many more games than in the past!
"Let me say it like this though, if I still have 50 wins after the group stage, then even if I’ve still got the most wins in Europe as a Liverpool manager then everybody will hate that! The highest number of wins but everybody will hate it!"
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Klopp though, believes a young side - after making 11 changes from the starting XI which won at Wolves last weekend - has a lot more to give in this competition, even if they took some hard lessons after Florian Flecker's goal gave LASK the lead in Austria.
"Oh yes, we have some young players who can achieve a lot more, oh yeah. I said I know that people expect us to fly through this competition. It will not happen.
Ben Doak flourished against LASK (Andrew Powell/Getty Images)Do you think Ben Doak deserves an opportunity in the Premier League? Let us know in the comments below!
"In the group stage it will not happen, in the knockout it will not happen. We have to dig in, dig into it. That’s what we did tonight, the opponent suffered much less than us, from the bad pitch than we did.
"We had to get used to it, so we can learn so much. If we could have used Ben Doak a little more often, give him the ball a little more, then he could have had more even times on the touchline to cause problems.
"Stefan (Bajcetic) found a way into the game, after a rather difficult start, but we caused them more problems with the timing of the passes, and Ryan Gravenberch played a super game he was decisive for us. While Harvey (Elliott) was excellent.”
All four are under 21. But it was Salah who finished it off with a fine goal to make things comfortable at the end, as he emerged as a late substitute.