Jurgen Klopp’s assistant Pep Lijnders has been speaking to the media ahead of Liverpool’s Carabao Cup game against Arsenal.
The Dutchman touched on a number of topics, but had some interesting words to say about Diogo Jota.
Liverpool’s official site quote Lijnders as saying: ‘I said last week he is at the same level technically as our front three and the one thing I found really difficult to coach is the intuition in the box, being in the right position to score like the pure instinct of a striker – what we want from many players, of course, but especially from our front three.
‘He, in 10 or 15 minutes, was three or four times in the position to score, so that’s really something that is good.’
To say that Jota is on the same level technically as Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino – three of Europe’s best attackers – is lofty praise indeed.
The 4-cap Portugal international has already netted his first Premier League goal for the Reds, scoring Liverpool’s third against Arsenal on Monday evening.
The £41 million man has an excellent knack of getting into fantastic goalscoring positions, a fact reinforced by his 16 goals in all competitions last year for Wolves.
It is intriguing to see Lijnders say that Jota possesses this trait, and it is just as interesting to see Klopp’s No.2 say that he finds such an ability difficult to coach.
In all honesty, it would be tough to coach.
Some players can simply make a career out of having a footballing brain, where they can wander into incredible positions almost subconsciously.
Liverpool didn’t really lack goal-scorers in the first place with Salah, Mane and Firmino hanging around.
In that respect, it should strike fear into their rivals that another natural, and lethal, marksman has been added to the squad.
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