Jurgen Klopp names Liverpool's standout player in Brentford win and who Reds star who is 'exceptional'

Jurgen Klopp hailed Darwin Nunez's pressing from the front to help Liverpool earn a 3-0 victory over Brentford.

The Reds bounced not only bounced back to winning ways but moved up to second in the Premier League table after putting the Bees to the sword at Anfield. Mo Salah fired a double while Diogo Jota was on target for the home side. However, Brentford asked Liverpool plenty of problems throughout the contest, particularly, physically, and Bryan Mbeumo was denied by home goalkeeper Alisson Becker before the deadlock was broken.

Liverpool's centre-back duo Virgil van Dijk and Joel Matip stood firm throughout, although Klopp was impressed how Nunez's work-rate stopped Brentford from playing long balls they'd have liked to have utilised more frequently.

Speaking at his post-match press conference, Reds boss Klopp said: "It's not only the centre-backs who obviously played a really good game. It's super-difficult. I think the big chance Mbeumo had in the first half, the pass was already exceptional, but it was not the centre-halves there after a set-piece, probably. Trent was the one. These situations could've happened much more often because they are just that good, but generally the defending was really good.

"Standout in this defending was really Darwin because it's all about [that] Brentford wants to play long balls, that's one thing, but you need to know when, and we can only influence that by one player, when you start the pressing from the centre you have to go for the goalie without getting the ball, they pass to the centre-half and you follow that, so the work-rate was insane. It was our problem today, obviously, we had a very young bench and in a set-piece game, with Harvey and then Lucho having not the set-piece specialists, let me say it like that, to bring on was a bit tricky, so it was clear that a lot of them have to play really, really long and because Brentford never changed.

"They changed details, but not the general plan; 'We are 1-0 down, no problem, 2-0 down...' then you're one set-piece and [it's] game on, so we came through that period with the six set-pieces I think, six corners, I'm not sure that happened ever before, they had six corners and didn't score. It was just good, focused, work-rate, and then on top of that playing football and overcoming a little. Kostas Tsimikas, [for] example, we all could see the difference between Kosti before the assist and after the assist. That's football and that's life. It's helpful if you get positive feedback and an assist is obviously positive feedback. So, very important, and a lot of players, actually all players really, performed on a top level today and I'm really happy with that."

Mo Salah broke another record as he hit 200 goals in English football - with all but two coming since joining Liverpool from AS Roma in 2017. On the Egyptian, Klopp said: "Exceptional. Just an exceptional player. He played a super game today. We all know how difficult it is against these two tall centre-backs, two players around him and all these kind of things, but how often he kept the ball for us and we could play from there - that was super-important - and then scoring two goals. We had so many good moments in the first half where we scored but it was offside and things like that. Then in that moment, the composure for the first goal is insane. There is no doubt when the ball is in that area [that] in the end you see it on the scoresheet. A pretty special player."