Jurgen Klopp believes Taiwo Awoniyi has “arrived where he belongs” after the Nottingham Forest striker came back to haunt his former side.
Awoniyi spent six years with Liverpool, but failed to make a single appearance and was instead sent away on a series of loans. Following a breakthrough campaign with Union Berlin, Klopp urged the Nigerian to make the move permanent when the option was on table.
And after scoring 15 times in his only campaign as a full-time Union player, he was picked up by Forest as part of their summer spending spree following promotion. Since moving to the CIty Ground, Awoniyi has been in and out of Steve Cooper’s starting XI, but enjoyed his best performance in the Garibaldi up against his former employers.
After giving the likes of Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez no end of trouble throughout the encounter, Awoniyi scored the only goal of the game to earn Forest a priceless win. The 25-year-old opted to not celebrate his goal against Liverpool and Klopp returned that respectful gesture with a classy message to the celebrating striker.
“He’s had a sensational development,” Klopp said in his post-match press conference. “He has arrived where he belongs and I am happy for him, but not today so much.”
Straight after the full-time whistle, he said: “To score against Liverpool is a day I will never forget. I will always be grateful to Liverpool for scouting me from Nigeria when I was 18 and scoring against them is amazing. I was always looking forward to the game against Liverpool and it was emotional.”
Awoniyi continued: “It was a good game for the team. We had a plan to play compactly and to find a way to score and at the end we won. I’m very happy about it.
“As a team we’ll stick together like a family and we have to thank the fans because they were with us and we just have to keep on going. This kind of game, we have to look back on it and build on it. Now we concentrate on the next one.”
Having been slowly integrated into his line-up, Cooper correctly predicted that Awoniyi’s work-rate and physicality would help occupy the Reds defenders - particularly the out of form Virgil van Dijk.
"T worked so hard. We played him today as we thought he could be a handful for Virgil van Dijk. He really proved to be that and deserved his goal," Cooper explained. "If he didn’t celebrate, I’ll support whatever a player decides to do.”
The win lifted Forest off the foot of the Premier League table for at least 24 hours and earned them just their second Premier League win of the season. And Cooper, who was given a new contract as an act of support from the Forest board, hopes the result will prove a turning point in their season.
“Liverpool had loads of the ball and territory, we had some good chances as well,” he added. “Obviously it feels great, there are a few things about the win which are really important; one, we really needed a win because we've been on a poor run.
"It is a very important win for the club and the city, there is a nice history about the fixture and definitely a game fans looked forward to and I know for us to win the game is important for many generations.
"And going forward it is a good reference point for us to show we can compete at this level and create chances."
