Klopp hailed the ‘exceptional’ player
Jurgen Klopp had plenty of praise for one of his players after the Carabao Cup win against Fulham on Wednesday night.
Liverpool came from a goal down to win 2-1 at Anfield and edge closer to securing a Carabao Cup final place.
Fulham took a surprise lead through Willian’s first half goal but Liverpool responded with strikes from Curtis Jones and Curtis Jones to take them within touching distance of reaching the final at Wembley.
With Trent Alexander-Arnold ruled out for an extended period with injury, Klopp was forced to call upon Connor Bradley, who started in the right back position.
Bradley had come on in the 2-0 FA Cup win against Arsenal just a few days before and looked composed on Wednesday, leading to widespread praise for the 20-year-old.
Klopp was also one of those who singled him out and believes he will go on to have a successful career.
He said: “I’m not sure he’ll make it home, probably he will fall asleep in the dressing room. Exceptional. What a boy. Fantastic character, real talent, top potential – and he’s in the right team because everybody loves him and respects him and wants him to succeed, it’s really nice.
“It was super hard, super tough. He was involved in the goal we conceded, falling over the ball or whatever, but as a team it was obvious that we caused ourselves some problems against a really compact defending from Fulham, we played a lot around and got stuck on the wing, no fluidity there and we had to change that and play more in the half-spaces.”
Assessing the team performance as a whole, he added: “The first half, we had a lot of possession without a lot of outcomes. We played too much around the formation and for us now it’s a time that we have to adapt slightly because we are used to a couple of things and some of them were not there today. It’s not a problem, you’ve just got to adapt to it.
“We saw in the first half what’s wrong, it’s just difficult to change it, to talk to the players, to get information out there. Half-time was really crucial again today, to tell them where to play and stuff like this, because we didn’t play bad, we just didn’t play good.”
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