On how pleased he is being able to call on the talent from the Academy…
I think this club is known for this. I heard the fans singing for Trent [Alexander-Arnold]the song about the Scouser, I don’t know exactly what they sing, but it probably has to do with him coming from the Academy as well. We have already a few starters from our Academy and to see these players that train with us on a daily basis, we know their quality, so it’s nice to see that they show [it] on a Premier League level that they can easily play at this level.
The thing for them is, it’s not about easily playing at this level, but you have to compete with Mo [Salah]Virgil [van Dijk] and all these kind of players. It’s not enough to be good enough to play at this level, you have to be good enough to play for Liverpool and that is probably the next step they have to make. But they’ve showed today that these players are capable of playing at a Premier League level, that’s for sure.
On Federico Chiesa’s performance from the bench…
I don’t know if we saw it the same, but I think what I saw is what you can expect. If a player is out for five or six months you cannot expect [too much]. I saw ups and downs. I saw some really good moments and I saw some moments where I felt like, ‘OK, you can do better than this.’ For me, that’s completely normal if a player has been out for so long and plays his first game in five or six months.
I already said before that it makes it so difficult for me because normally in the pre-season a player gets three, four or five games especially and then he’s only out for four or five weeks. Instead, he was out for so long, so to get him back to his best level is not easy, but it was good to see that he showed some quality already today. But it’s the same for him like the youngsters, it’s not enough to play at this level, you have to compete with Mo Salah, Cody Gakpo, Lucho [Luis Diaz]Darwin and Diogo [Jota]. But it’s good to see that he’s back and that he had a few good moments in the game.
On how much of a risk it was in making so many changes…
It would be normal if I play with all the regular starters that we have a better team than we have tonight otherwise I make every week the wrong decision. Maybe it’s a possibility! We also trust these players because we know how much quality they have. So, that’s the first reason to play these players. We have a lot of confidence in them as well.
Second of all, it’s not about the result on Sunday, it’s more for the long-term fitness of the players that we made the decision that the ones who have played so many minutes to give them a bit of rest during this week, because the schedule is going to be intense again in the upcoming weeks. For the ones who have played a lot, only 45 or 60 minutes, and the ones who haven’t played a lot play 90. That’s what we did, and it was good for us that it was enough to win it.
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