Jurgen Klopp still regards Luis Diaz as "fresh blood" at Liverpool and believes the winger will benefit from having a full pre-season under his belt.
Diaz was an instant success when making a surprise £50million move from Porto shortly before the January transfer deadline, scoring six goals and providing five assists in 26 appearances while starting the finals of the League Cup, FA Cup and Champions League.
The 25-year-old has taken a little while to rediscover his form this summer but was much livelier in the Reds' 1-0 defeat at Red Bull Salzburg on Wednesday.
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And Klopp said of pre-season: "It is important for everybody, you need to get used to each other again, that's how it is. But we can build on patterns we used in the past because the majority of the team have been together for a long time.
"We brought in some fresh blood as well, Luis we can say for sure is still in that category. And of course Darwin (Nunez) and Fabio (Carvalho).
"It's good for all of us. We said it plenty of times, this game only works if you can work on the training pitch. It's not a game where you just play every day, you need time on the training pitch to work on different things, tactical stuff, defensively, offensively and the only time really is pre-season. That's why we love it and use it as well as we can and train as often as possible.
"It makes it in some days just impossible to perform in some pre-season games on the highest level, but we get watched by the whole world and everyone is like 'oh my God, how does that look'. We cannot do everything in the highest moments. Sports science, if you train and you are never feeling the intensity then something is wrong with training. You can only get an effect from training if you reach a specific amount of kilometres, if you want. We have to do that and we did it.
"We will see if we are fresh on Saturday, I cannot promise that but we will try to fight with all we have."
Diaz is likely to start when Liverpool take on Manchester City in the Community Shield at Leicester City's King Power Stadium on Saturday. The Reds then entertain Strasbourg the following day.
It has been the first pre-season under Klopp without Sadio Mane, the Senegalese forward having moved to Bayern Munich last month. And the Reds boss admits the squad are continuing to adjust without their former colleague.
"Of course we had a little change in our team, we lost Sadio who was a fixed line-up player for six years," said Klopp. "But we cannot stick together forever, we have to make changes. And when Sadio told us he wanted to face a new challenge, because it was early enough we accepted that so we had time to prepare that situation and we did.
"Now we have to find together again, that's completely normal like any pre-season, with the difference one fixed point is gone. It will be interesting. The good thing is we don’t have to think too far ahead, we just have to find a way to win a specific football game on the weekend. That starts on Saturday."
Klopp added: "I like the competition (the Community Shield) but I think it would be possible to find another date maybe, we had a longer season than other teams and now we have a shorter pre-season. It makes not so much sense.
"In Germany they play the Super Cup and the teams involved don’t have to play the first cup round, but we have to find a way and that is what we try. In two days the season starts again and really looking forward to it."
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