Liverpool eased into the Europa League quarter-finals after thrashing Sparta Prague at Anfield. The win may have come at a cost for one of Jürgen Klopp’s players.
Jürgen Klopp expressed his delight at the manner in which Liverpool swept aside Sparta Prague in the Europa League. The Reds boss admitted to having another injury worry after the 6-1 win at Anfield.
Liverpool cruised into the quarter-finals in Europe after a ruthless second-leg display. The hosts were 4-0 up inside 15 minutes, and went on to record a crushing 11-2 victory on aggregate following last week’s 5-1 win in the Czech Republic.
Cody Gakpo’s double plus goals from Darwin Núñez, Bobby Clark, Mohamed Salah and Dominik Szoboszlai saw the Reds make light work of their last-16 opponents. They’ll find out who they will face in the next round when the quarter-final draw is made tomorrow.
“Yes, absolutely we got rhythm and intensity,” Klopp said live on TNT Sports after the win. “That is how we had to take it. I told the boys before the game that is how we approach it. I don’t expect to come into the game and not go through, we do not expect to somehow lose 5-0.
“It was on us to decide how good a game it would be and obviously we enjoyed playing football, some fantastic goals as well early on. From that point on it becomes a difficult game, like how do you keep going? We did, and I liked a lot of stuff that I saw, but of course it is how it is. We had to bring it over the line somehow, scored some more goals in the second half, conceded one in the middle too. All fine, all good. We wanted to go through, we wanted to play well and score goals and we did that.”
The win may have come at the cost of another injury though, this time to young midfielder Bobby Clark. The 19-year-old visibly struggled with a knock before being replaced in the second half.
“He played incredibly,” Klopp said on Clark. “It was his first goal but he won the ball back after another one. He is the one I am worried a bit about, we wanted to take off Mo [Salah], but Bobby sits on the ground and says he feels something in the ankle. Hopefully it is nothing. The steps the boy made though, pfff [wow].
“We’ve had such a difficult situation with all the injuries and then the boys stepped in and took their chances. So very happy with that, they were exceptional again.”
