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Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
Sport
John Aldridge

Liverpool destruction of Manchester United must not change summer plan as 'six players' could leave

Robbie Fowler himself will be delighted - the more Mohamed Salah scores, the better we are.

He knows this season has not gone well for him, he’s not been himself. Teams make it harder for him because they double up on him but that was his best game for a long time.

It was epitomised by putting Lisandro Martinez on his backside which everyone is talking about. When he’s at his best, we’re at our best.

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You’ve got Ian Rush, Roger Hunt and people like that, they’re the records Mo should be chasing but that apart it’s a great achievement, it really is.

In such a small period of time, it’s just magnificent. Let’s hope it kicks him on and gets him back into his stride to be the player we know he can be. When he’s like that, we can go to places again where we’ve been in the past because we need him massively.

It helps when you’ve got good strikers around you, for some time we’ve only had two strikers fit or three at most. On the bench we’ve had nothing that the manager can change the game with, we’ve been conceding the first goal or when we’re chasing the game, there has been nothing for Jurgen.

All of a sudden yesterday he had Bobby Firmino and Diogo Jota on the bench, the other three knew that. When you’re a striker, you know you’ve got to score goals and create goals otherwise you get substituted or lose your place.

Now there’s competition up front we haven’t had all season.

He’s got options and Luis Diaz should be back in a few weeks, then he’ll have six players whereas in the past we’ve only had two. I don’t like using injuries as an excuse but you’ve got to see what it’s done to us, as well as we haven’t been defending, we haven’t been scoring goals and that’s why we were languishing where we were.

We saw a different team against Manchester United, it showed where we can get to again. It’ll spread massive belief as it did for them at Old Trafford, we gave them so much belief and hopefully, that will do the same for us - restoring our belief to get a top four place.

Firmino goal the icing on the cake but Gakpo and Nunez performances bode well for the future

It was great to see Bobby come on and score, it really was, that was the icing on the cake because he is so well thought of, he’s had a great career at Liverpool and everyone wishes him all the best.

In the meantime, he’s got work to do to finish on a high, it’ll be great if he scores some more important goals between now and the end of the season. Then we’ll wish him well where he can have a lap of honour for what he’s done for the club. You saw his reaction after the goal, it bodes well.

I still think you need another striker when Bobby goes, the owners have to give Jurgen backing because there’s going to be six players going out.

It’s a big rebuild and we won’t receive the money from the players to spend so it will be from the owners themselves - they know that because this manager has to be backed to the hilt to give him a chance.

It’s been hard for Gakpo, he’s come into a team that’s been struggling for confidence and now we’ve seen a player there who is developing, he was excellent.

His touch play, his work rate, his finishing, the two goals were top drawer, he’s settling in and will get better under Jurgen Klopp.

Nunez with two fantastic goals, brilliant, a centre-forward playing like that on the left-wing, that’s what we’ve been waiting for. Long term, that shows it bodes well for us with five strikers we’re going to have next season, we’re going to need another because you need two for each position.

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