Jurgen Klopp rues Liverpool for selling Ben Doak short as he reveals plan to unleash emerging star

It took going behind to spark them into action, but Liverpool got the job done on their first Europa League outing for six years.

And Jurgen Klopp reckons they would have had an easier time of it had his players used Ben Doak more. The tartan teen became the Anfield club's fourth youngest player to appear in Europe when he was handed a start in their Group E opener against LASK in Austria. Doak played an hour before Klopp threw on his big gun in Mo Salah, with the score locked at 1-1 following Darwin Nunez' penalty.

Three minutes later, Luis Diaz steered the Reds in front before Salah sealed the points with a deft finish towards the end. Doak will get more opportunities, but Klopp's post-match comments proved he's not just in the team for a taste, the German wants his more experienced stars to use him in order to unlock defences, rather than keeping him on fringes of the action.

"Oh yes, we have some young players who can achieve a lot more, oh yeah," said the Liverpool boss. "I said I know that people expect us to fly through this competition. It will not happen.

"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.”