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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Sport
Tom Blow

Liverpool's Jurgen Klopp sums up how Luis Diaz "naturally" proved to be perfect transfer

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has praised new signing Luis Diaz for "naturally" suiting his team's style of play, although accepts he still needs time to adapt.

The Colombian, 25, arrived from Porto in January and scored his first Reds goal in the 3-1 Premier League win against Norwich at Anfield on Saturday afternoon.

Diaz could make his fifth appearance for Liverpool on Wednesday evening when they welcome struggling Leeds to Merseyside on Wednesday evening.

And Klopp is delighted with how the forward has started his Anfield career, believing he's a perfect fit for his successful team.

The German hasn't had much chance to speak to Diaz yet due to the club's busy fixture list. Sunday's EFL Cup final against Chelsea will be their seventh fixture of February.

What are your thoughts on Luis Diaz's first four Liverpool outings? Let us know in the comments below!

Jurgen Klopp is delighted with Luis Diaz's progress at Liverpool (Getty Images)

His assistants, however, have sat down with the forward to discuss his progress.

"We had a chance to talk to him a lot," said Klopp on Tuesday afternoon. "Not myself, but Vitor Matos and Pep Lijnders, and they both obviously [speak] Portuguese.

"But we usually do it like that if the player's natural way to play is the same way we do, we only give a few [pieces of] information.

"For us, it's the way he has to defend, that is really important, because the way we defend is definitely different to Porto. But his offensive movements are really natural like they are now.

That means he can play on the wing. We had some problems in the first half [against Norwich] definitely because we were not brilliant and there were not a lot of options to play.

"It was a completely new front three. Mo obviously plays [on the right] for a long time, but even with Sadio up front, that was a long time ago and a new player on the left wing.

"That makes it more difficult for patterns to be obvious. We knew that before the game so we didn't want to make it worse by giving him a playbook.

"You have to let them be as sure about themselves as possible. So we didn't give him anything in Colombia. We wanted to wait until he was here.

"We wanted the player because we saw him playing and thought it'd be easy to fit him in."

Diaz joined Liverpool after a stunning six months, scoring 16 goals in all competitions for Porto this season and winning the Golden Boot at last summer's Copa America.

Klopp went on to say: "The things he is doing, he is obviously a really talented player with an incredible work rate on top of that.

Diaz scored his first goal for Liverpool in the 3-1 win against Norwich on Saturday (Getty Images)

"Did we speak about counter-pressing? Yes, but I am pretty sure he knows that anyway. But you can really see he is in there full throttle.

"So when you watch our team have a good game a couple of times and you want to be part of it, then that is the obvious thing.

"So if you don't [counter-press] then you will hear the coach pretty heavily all the time. You don't want to have that, so you just do it.

"I haven't seen the stats [about winning the ball back] but I know he has done really well. Like I said, that is natural and we saw that.

"But there will be moments when we talk longer, in more detail, but that is not now because we want him like he is and not directly converting him into what we think he can be in the future.

"There is time for that. We're really happy with what he is delivering now and from there we will go."

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