On the quality of Alexander-Arnold’s goal…
I can talk for hours about that! Unbelievable. I think the biggest compliment Trent could get was the reaction of everyone after the [Manchester] United game. Every player around the world, maybe except for a few, have bad games and that’s completely normal. But the moment Trent has a bad game, everybody has an opinion about him. Maybe – maybe – that has to do with the contract situation, I don’t know if that wasn’t there if everybody would have reacted in the same way. The biggest compliment you can get if you have such a great first half of the season and you don’t play a good game against United – that was clear for me, for the fans, for you, for all the analysts who saw the game – [is that] many were quite hard on him, and maybe that’s the biggest compliment you can get.
On whether he selected Alexander-Arnold to give him confidence…
I do think that is important, but that was not the reason to play him. The reason to play him was that Conor Bradley came back from a hamstring injury and two days ago he played his first minutes against Tottenham Hotspur. I think it’s a bit unknown for everyone how our flight was that night, so we couldn’t land here in Liverpool and we had to go to Birmingham. We came home really, really late and for me it was too big of a risk to play a player that had a hamstring issue five, six, seven, eight weeks ago two days after the Tottenham game.
Then, the only available full-back is Trent and as a result of him playing I think it was good for him to play again in our own stadium, to feel the reception of the fans again. That was already fantastic when we played Tottenham and also again special for him today. That will only help him and us because if you want to do special things during the season we have to do it together. Not only the players, not only the players with the manager, but definitely the players with the fans.
On Danns and whether he could be loaned out in January…
The last thing [a loan move], I don’t know at the moment, to be honest. What I like most about him – and with most of the Academy players – is the mentality they have. So, that’s a big compliment for him and definitely also a big compliment to our youth academy because if you are a youngster and you come to the first team sometimes you are used in a way that you might not expect [in training]. Although it is common in football, you are then playing the other team that has to copy sometimes the team we face over here, so sometimes you are in a different position.
He is a striker, but if we are playing 11v11 and I make the choice to play [Diogo] Jota and the other side Darwin [Nunez] is playing as a nine, he has to play as an 11 or as a six or whatever position we need him. But he will always, like the other Academy players, give all they have. James McConnell is also a perfect example of that. If that is your mentality you can definitely get the most of your potential. That is what is going to happen with him. What that potential is, it probably needs some time to find out if he will in the end be a starter for us, but he will have a very good career because of his mentality. I am very sure of that.
