Table-topping Liverpool travel to face Andoni Iraola’s seventh-placed side in the Premier League on Saturday afternoon
On the challenge he is expecting against Bournemouth…
It’s a big one and this is probably going to sound strange.
I knew this already when we played the second half against them in our home game. We were 3-0 up at half-time and I was expecting a second half where we could just control the game, have the ball a bit and maybe score the fourth one – but they just kept on going at us for 45 minutes and that showed me the character of the team. Since then they have been outstanding. They were before that game also. Because we were 3-0 up at half-time, we didn’t really match the first half, in my opinion, maybe we deserved to be up but not with three goals.
And afterwards they have beaten so many strong teams and there is a simple reason for that: a lot of quality. Created by Richard [Hughes], of course, our current sporting director who worked there for a few years. And he hired a fantastic manager as well. Why is he a fantastic manager? He has a great game plan and his players work incredibly hard. And then in a different way than Arsenal, they are also a threat on set-pieces. Where Arsenal nine out of 10 times does the same, they always come up with worked ones that have been very useful for them as well. So, in every department a very good and strong team and they deserve to be where they are – maybe they even deserve a bit higher than the position they are at the moment.
On Justin Kluivert’s development as a player…
He is one of the many examples where I think Richard deserves a lot of credit, but not only Richard, the manager of course as well because he started working with him. And you know that I believe the team makes individuals better.
You need quality and that’s what Richard brought there, and his successor probably as well. But I think most of the players that are there were there last season already as well. And the manager has done an incredible job.
Justin, great season he’s having – nice and good to see for us because we always knew he was a big talent. He left Holland quite early, he was a bit criticised for that because in Holland many people always feel you need to have some extra years in the Eredivisie before you go aboard.
But he is a great example that you can be really successful by going abroad early and going to a few clubs and then at a certain age – because I think he is only 24, he is not so old yet – be at this level already. He will play another big talent that has grown up at Ajax, Ryan Gravenberch, so interesting match-up tomorrow.
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On the condition of the Reds squad…
Yeah, you can say I rested a lot of players [in midweek], you can also say you played the ones who needed playing time. And I was really pleased how they performed at PSV Eindhoven, who, apart from three or four players that were not playing, had quite a strong team and we were more than competitive.
Even in the second half when there were so many youngsters on the pitch. And the ones that stayed behind, they didn’t rest in the sense that they had three or four days off – they did train but they didn’t play a game. I’ve said already, that doesn’t give us any guarantees for Saturday but it hopefully will help us during the upcoming three or four months because the Premier League and the Champions League is a long season for them, with 10 months in a row non-stop playing games without any weeks off in between.
So, hopefully that will help them stay fresh for the upcoming months.
On how ready Federico Chiesa is for more minutes in the Premier League…
Yeah, of course he is ready for more minutes in the Premier League, because if he can play 90 at Champions League level then you are able to play an amount of minutes in the Premier League. His main problem, if you want to call it a problem, is that he is in competition with Luis Diaz, Darwin Nunez, Cody Gakpo, Mo Salah and Diogo Jota. I think you’ll agree with me that they are doing quite well also. But it’s very good for us that it was six or seven months ago, he said, against Switzerland [for Italy] when they lost in the Euros was the last time he played 90 minutes.
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