Mo Salah returns for Liverpool this week revealing that Diogo Jota‘s arrival has boosted his personal ambition of winning a Champions League–Premier League double this season.
Salah says Jota has eased the burden on him, Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino to provide the attacking penetration for Jurgen Klopp‘s side.
Jota has hit the ground running since his £41m move from Wolves with eight goals in his first 12 appearances, the latest of them against Leicester on Sunday when Salah was missing after a positive Covid-19 test while away on international duty with Egypt.
Salah has provided a negative test after completing his self-isolation and is therefore available for tomorrow’s Champions League home game against Atalanta when Liverpool will bid for the win that will secure qualification to the knock-out stages with two games to spare. And he welcomes the competition from the Portugal international Jota.
“To have someone else who can score goals is a great option for us,” said Salah. “To see someone come in and score goals makes you feel happy for him but also happy for the team because he is going to help the team and make it easier for us up front.
“Hopefully that will happen again and again and again. Scoring a few goals is a good way for him to start here maybe for his confidence. As teammates, we try to push each other in training every day. Now with Diogo we can play all four together [in attack] or still play three.
“We won the Champions League in 2019 and the Premier League last season. My ambition is to win both in the same season.”
While Salah praised Jota’s impact, Klopp made a point of emphasising the vital role played in the team “orchestra” by Firmino, the player thought to be most under threat from Jota, although the Liverpool manager could elect to play all four of his strikers at Anfield.
Firmino couldn’t hide his delight at scoring only his second goal of the season against Leicester and Klopp said: “Scoring was always important for Bobby. But Bobby is a complete footballer. A football team is like an orchestra, you have different people for different instruments. And some of them are louder than others, but they are all important for the rhythm.
“Bobby plays like 12 instruments in our orchestra! He’s very important for our rhythm. We can play well without him as well, but I certainly want him on the pitch and if you look at the numbers, I like it a lot having him on the pitch.
“I’m not concerned about anything with Bobby, but I know from time to time it happens that he scores a goal. This goal was very important, and what I loved most was the reaction of the boys. You saw the celebration, it was really emotional. Obviously, the players read newspapers, unfortunately, and they saw there was some criticism, so they were really happy for him to score.”
If Liverpool can complete a quick double over the Italians – who they beat 5-0 in Bergamo earlier this month – it would give Klopp the chance to rest some of his regulars in the last two group games during a hectic schedule of 11 games in the next 39 days.
“It’s clear if we win this game then some of our problems will be sorted,” he added. “We played exceptionally well in Atalanta but that game will have nothing to do with this one. We need to do well again otherwise we will have problems.”
Despite the injury problems that have forced Klopp to constantly change his defence, Liverpool have kept four clean sheets and conceded only three goals in the seven games since Virgil Van Dijk was ruled out, probably for the season.
James Milner and Fabinho are likely to continue in the back four in the continuing absence of Trent Alexander-Arnold and Joe Gomez.
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from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3q1wFqm
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