Jurgen Klopp praised Jarell Quansah’s effort as Liverpool advanced to the Carabao Cup quarter-finals with a win against Bournemouth.
The Reds overcame the dangerous circumstances of Storm Ciaran to defeat the Cherries 2-1 on the south coast. Cody Gakpo gave the visitors the lead in the 31st minute, but Justin Kluivert equalised on 61 minutes. Darwin Nunez comes off the bench to score the game-winning goal with 20 minutes remaining.
Klopp made nine changes to his starting lineup from the weekend’s 3-1 win against Nottingham Forest. Quansah, 20, was given his eighth senior appearance as he continues his breakout season. The performance of the England youth international, as well as custodian Caoimhin Kelleher, drew Klopp’s attention.
“It’s a top, top, top cup game,” Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers remarked. It’s all about winning, all about making it through. There were excellent things today; I won’t go into the details because you saw them for yourself. Both teams found it quite challenging.
“We could have scored more goals in the first half, but we didn’t.” We obviously realised in the second half that it would have been a good idea to have scored more goals [in the first half] since the wind transformed the game again. We scored our second goal, a fantastic goal, and then we fought incredibly hard; we had excellent moments, but mindset is key in these moments. Everyone expects the home team to want it, but I witnessed my team as well – how hard we really wanted it, and I am really thrilled with that. It was a top cup game in unusual conditions.
“There was another thing that was obvious: he was really good.” Wow, in these conditions. Where is it going to fall with so many challenging balls to judge and estimate? He performed admirably. On the ball, Caoimhin [Kelleher] reasoned that he should give him a lot of space and see what he could accomplish. He did exceptionally well there. Absolutely, excellent game.”
