Liverpool are edging ever close to the new Premier League season, with Jurgen Klopp taking his players through their paces at a pre-season training camp in Austria.
The Reds are preparing to play Red Bull Salzburg this evening in Austria as they gear up for the season-opening Community Shield fixture against Manchester City on Saturday. Klopp has therefore turned the intensity up a notch to get his players into top physical shape.
One of those looking to impress Klopp in pre-season is Joe Gomez, who didn’t enjoy the best 2021/22 campaign. Meanwhile, we have the latest tale from our serialisation of Pep Lijnders’ new book.
Here are Mirror Football’s latest Liverpool headlines.
Van Dijk heaps praises on Gomez
Virgil van Dijk believes his Liverpool team-mate Joe Gomez is right up there as one of the best English centre-backs around.
Gomez only made 21 appearances for the Reds last season, with Joel Matip and Ibrahima Konate ahead of him in Jurgen Klopp’s thinking. But he committed his long-term future to the club by signing a new five-year contract earlier this month and Van Dijk has backed him to come good.
“We spoke about it before he signed the deal and I’m just very happy that he’s staying at the club, staying with me. Also I’m happy for the club that he’s signed,” Van Dijk told the club website.
“He is, in my opinion, [one of] if not the best English centre-back around. Obviously we’ve both been very unlucky with the injuries we had. Obviously his time will come again and hopefully this season he can show that.”
Klopp takes training up a notch
Jurgen Klopp has increased the intensity of Liverpool’s pre-season training as he builds up for the start of the 2022/23 season.
Liverpool are in Austria on a training camp and will face Austrian champions Red Bull Salzburg on Wednesday evening before playing rivals Manchester City in Saturday's Community Shield.
“The training sessions were intense to a specific point, that we could get fitter and fitter,” Klopp told the Reds website. “The running sessions were extremely hard but we took care of them and now let’s see how we can grow in this season.
“For City, it’s not really different, they came back from America probably yesterday or something like that. So it will be a tough one.”
Inside Liverpool stag do
Jurgen Klopp’s assistant manager, Pep Lijnders, has explained how the Liverpool manager ended up inside a bar that has been named after him during a stag do for coach Vitor Matos back in April.
"Jürgen left the bus to enter Jürgen’s Bar when we stopped next to it in front of a red traffic light. All of the people inside thought he was a doppelganger, which made the moment of realisation that this was actually Jürgen Klopp so funny,” he writes in ‘ Pep Lijnders Intensity: Inside Liverpool FC - Our Identity’.
“The dinner party at Bacaro made for such a lovely time. His whole family was there and it became a real wedding party. We danced, sang and celebrated. Mission accomplished.
"Waking up the next day, we spotted that one of the newspapers had run a story about Jürgen’s appearance in the bar. It said he took some photos with fans and even a Benfica supporter. I couldn’t stop laughing at it.”
