Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp has hailed forward Sadio Mane ‘a machine’ after the Senegalese made his comeback from injury in the Reds’ 4-1 victory over West Ham.
The Reds dominated the game throughout, with Mohamed Salah netting a brace and goals from Joel Matip and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain making sure of the 3 points.
But Klopp has gone out of his way to praise Mane, who managed to start for the Reds for the first time since suffering a hamstring injury.
“I decided after just one training session to bring Sadio in from the beginning. I’ve never done that before, but obviously it was not the worse idea I’ve ever had. Sadio is a naturally fit player, he is a machine,” said Klopp.
“The first goal was a fantastic counter-attack, the second from a corner and that’s two goals from set-plays in a week. We’ve had that before – but usually from the other team.
“Our response to their goal was outstanding, Oxlade-Chamberlain used the chance, and then brilliant play for the fourth.
“Games sometimes are not like this. Two weeks ago at Wembley I felt quite different and we have responded really well. We wanted to strike back and we have with really good results.”
“We changed the system and yesterday was the first time we did it, 4-4-2, which looked maybe from the beginning like a very offensive line-up, we had a different idea – we wanted to defend deeper, more compact and using the space which we had for the counter-attacks,” he said.
“We will never know how it would have been if we don’t score the first one, I think it was kind of an open game up until then. We had to get used to it a little bit, it was difficult for the boys to wait a little bit more for the challenge than jump always.”
