'I love it' - Jürgen Klopp assesses Diogo Jota's start to life at LFC

The skillset Diogo Jota has brought to Liverpool’s squad has come as no surprise to Jürgen Klopp.

Jota continued his stellar run of form by scoring a clinical hat-trick during the Reds’ 5-0 Champions League victory over Atalanta BC in midweek.

That treble in Bergamo took the Portugal forward’s goal tally to seven in 10 appearances - of which only five were starts - for his new club, who visit Manchester City in the Premier League on Sunday.

“I’m not sure if ‘surprised’ is the right word, but I don’t expect that, to be honest,” Klopp replied, when asked to assess Jota’s start to life at Anfield.

“I give the new boys the time the individual needs - and that takes sometimes longer and sometimes not that long. I think Virgil van Dijk played a week after we signed him, or a few days after we signed him, and scored the first goal, that’s pretty special as well.

“There’s not one way for all the players. No, he is the player we thought he will be and we thought as well that we can help him to reach the next level, like he can help us to reach the next level because of his quality. 

“[He is] very young, 23, experienced anyway, played in one of the hardest-working teams you can face with Wolves. 

“Nuno is a very, very demanding manager so he knows that an offensive player has to do different jobs, not only creating and scoring, he has to work hard and all these kind of things. That all helps us and helps him, obviously, so I am really happy about the impact he had so far.”

Meanwhile, on the array of attacking options at his disposal following Jota’s arrival, Klopp stated: “First and foremost, we have much more offensive players, thank God. Pretty much all of them delivered for us in their moments, if it’s Divock Origi, if it’s Xherdan Shaqiri, Takumi Minamino. 

“That’s really good, that’s really important. Unfortunately, it’s the only area where we have that number of players in the moment, but it’s anyway good.

“It’s very good for us that Diogo could settle that quick and that he can gain confidence that early because it makes everything easier. 

“So, not scoring the number of goals he has scored so far wouldn’t have made him a worse player, it would have been completely normal if he would have missed chances instead of scoring. But now I love it obviously, like he did it, and the way he played and the way he contributed so early.

“That’s all very positive and yes, we have more than three offensive players and they are all good. That’s why they have a contract here.”

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