Lucas on a rare goal and the manager's half-time message
Lucas Leiva shared his delight after finding the net with a rare strike during the 5-0 thumping of Fleetwood Town in Liverpool's second pre-season friendly on Wednesday night.
The Brazilian, who last scored a competitive goal against Steaua Bucharest at Anfield in September 2010, drilled home from close range to make it 3-0 following superb approach play from Roberto Firmino and Ryan Kent.
It was an impressive outing from Jürgen Klopp’s charges as the manager fielded two different line-ups in each half against the League One outfit.
Lucas wore the captain’s armband for the second 45 minutes and admitted it was a sweet feeling when he hit the target.
“It’s good to score after quite a while,” Lucas told Liverpoolfc.com. “It was a good feeling, I’ve been feeling good and training really hard and hopefully I will have a good season ahead of me.
“I think it was a good test. Of course, we are still in an early stage of the pre-season, our second game, and I think it was a good performance overall but of course we can improve in a lot of aspects.
“We’ve been training really hard the last couple of weeks so we just tried to do our best and improve our fitness, which is the main thing, and of course start to do the things we are going to do at the start of the season.”
After Marko Grujic marked a dream debut for the club by netting the only goal of the first half, Klopp’s charges stepped up the pace after the break as they netted four more times.
Explaining the manager’s instructions to the second-half team, Lucas said: “It was just to try to play at the highest tempo possible.
“It’s a training session for us but at the end of the day we want to win the game and improve our fitness levels.
“You can only do that if you go for it and don’t save yourself, so that’s what he said to us at half-time and I think we tried to do that.
“Of course, at some point in the game you feel a bit more tired but that’s part of the pre-season and we only improve if we try as hard as we can.”
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