Jurgen Klopp says one Liverpool player did something ‘insane’ in Everton derby victory

Jurgen Klopp felt it was important that Mo Salah and Cody Gakpo were both on the scoresheet in Liverpool's Merseyside derby victory against Everton.

The Reds earned a first Premier League win of 2023 as they delivered a 2-0 victory at Anfield. The home side broke the deadlock in the 36th minute - just 18 seconds after visiting defender James Tarkowski cannoned a header against the post. Liverpool launched a swift counter through Darwin Nunez, who picked out Salah to finish. It was the Egyptian's first goal in six appearances.

Then four minutes into the second half, Gakpo finally found the net on his seventh outing since joining the Reds from PSV Eindhoven for £37 million in January. The forward converted Trent Alexander-Arnold's cross from close range at the back post.

Asked how important a goal for Gakpo could be, Klopp replied: “A good performance as well. The way he set up the chance for Darwin, he had other moments like this where he came out under pressure and then there was a foul and we got a free-kick. He did extremely well under massive pressure in the centre. In the end, it was not the most difficult goal he ever scored, but it is exactly the goal each striker is dreaming of when it didn’t happen for a while, probably.

“Both goals were, for both players, really important. The next one who could have needed something like that is probably Darwin; the chance he had was a really good one. Anyway, it was obviously Darwin with an insane run for the first goal and a super pass.

“We didn’t have these situations too often, to be 100 per cent honest, but if [we did] then it would have been pretty likely that we kicked the ball on the head of [Vitalii] Mykolenko. While I was changing, I saw the analysis of Carra [Jamie Carragher] and they spoke like 10 minutes about how this goal could have been defended. In the end, if you hit the head of the defender then that’s it, nothing will happen. It was still a good counter-attack without a goal.

“This was obviously a very important moment, not conceding in the first chance they had was a very important moment as well. I am not sure how much you can force luck, but if you don’t have it you are screwed! It’s not that we had too much, think about the first goal we conceded against Wolves – we can talk about everything we did not well and stuff like this, but how the ball went in was just like slapstick. Really important tonight, gave us all the signs that was us tonight, definitely, and now we have to make sure we are us from now on.”