How pleased he is to be able to draw on talent from the academy…

I think this club is known for that. I heard the fans singing for Trent (Alexander-Arnold), the song about the Scouser. I don’t know exactly what they’re singing, but it probably has something to do with the fact that he’s from the academy. We already have a few starters from our academy and when we see these players training with us on a daily basis, we know their quality, so it’s nice to see them showing it at a Premier League level where they can easily compete can this level.

For them it’s not about just playing at this level, it’s about competing with Mo (Salah), Virgil (van Dijk) and all these players. It’s not enough to be good enough to play at this level, you have to be good enough to play for Liverpool and that’s probably the next step they need to take. But they showed today that these players are capable of playing at Premier League level, that’s for sure.

On Federico Chiesa’s performance on the bench…

I don’t know if we saw it the same way, but I think what I saw is what you can expect. If a player is out for five or six months, you can’t expect (too much). I’ve seen ups and downs. I saw some really good moments and some moments where I thought: “Okay, you can do better than that.” For me it’s completely normal when a player is out for so long and plays his first game after five or six months.

I’ve said before that it’s so difficult for me because normally a player gets three, four or five games in pre-season and then he’s only out for four or five weeks. Instead, he’s been out for so long that it’s not easy to get him back to his best level, but it was nice to see that he showed some quality today. But for him it’s the same as for the youngsters, it’s not enough to play at this level, you have to compete with Mo Salah, Cody Gakpo, Lucho (Luis Diaz), Darwin and Diogo (Jota). But it’s good to see he’s back and had some good moments in the game.

How big a risk it was to make so many changes…

If I play with all the regular players, it would be normal for us to have a better team than tonight, otherwise I’ll make the wrong decision every week. Maybe it’s a possibility! We also trust these players because we know how much quality they have. So that’s the first reason to play against these players. We also have great confidence in them.

Secondly, it’s not about the result on Sunday, it’s more about the long-term fitness of the players. That’s why we decided to give those who played so many minutes some rest this week, because the schedule will be intense again in the coming weeks. For those who played a lot, just 45 or 60 minutes, and those who didn’t play a lot, play 90. We did that and it was good for us that it was enough to win.