Jürgen Klopp ‘relief’ after Liverpool’s first league win of the year

Jürgen Klopp said Liverpool showed signs of rediscovering their true form as his team recorded a first Premier League win of 2023 in the Merseyside derby against Everton.

Mohamed Salah scored his first league goal at Anfield since October while new £35m signing Cody Gakpo converted his first goal for the club in a comfortable defeat of Sean Dyche’s relegation-threatened team. Salah claimed the performance: “looks like the old Liverpool” and revealed that captain Jordan Henderson and vice-captain James Milner convened a team meeting last week to discuss the recent poor run. Klopp concurred that his team had produced the ideal response to the 3-0 loss at Wolves last time out.

The Liverpool manager said: “Both goals for both players were really important. The next player who needs a goal like that [Gakpo’s tap-in] is Darwin [Núñez]. Darwin produced an insane run for the first goal and a super pass. It was a very important moment, not conceding from their first chance (when James Tarkowski headed against a post 15 seconds before Salah scored). I’m not sure how much you can force luck but it was nice to get it. It was a really important night. It gave us all the signs that was us tonight, definitely, and now we have to make sure it is us from now on.”

Klopp admitted his overriding emotion was one of relief following a damaging sequence of four league games without a win. He added: “Relief. That is it. I’m happy with the performance. It was necessary we played the game we wanted to and not the game Everton wanted us to. There were a really high number of set pieces. These set pieces are a massive threat and I thought we dealt with that really well. On top of that we were super-dominant, switched the sides and I loved both