Diogo Jota says he never though of displacing Liverpool trio
Diogo Jota says he never thought about taking the places of Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino when he arrived at Liverpool.
The Portugal star was a £43m signing when he arrived from Wolves just over a year ago. And he has fitted in seamlessly into an attack that had been feared throughout Europe.
Despite his knee problem last season, which saw him miss three months of the campaign, Jota has still hit 16 goals in 37 matches for the club.
His Champions League hat-trick against Atalanta in early November helped announce himself to the Liverpool fans. And he is now an integral part of Jurgen Klopp’s attacking options.
“Obviously I knew they were one of the best three attacking trios in the world but I never thought about coming and taking anyone’s place,” said Jota, who has scored 16 goals in 37 matches for the club,” said Jota at today’s press conference ahead of the game with Porto.
“I thought about giving my best in training and in games and then it’s up to the manager to decide.
“It’s always useful when you have those kind of players to help you because what we want is to win and only if you have good players are you able to do that.”
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Klopp: He’s enjoyable to work with
Jota has scored three in six matches this season and Klopp is delighted with the 24-year-old.
“He’s an exceptional player. I’m really happy we signed him. He is a really strong personality, you cannot know about that before you met the person, but he is a really impressive, mature, young man,” said Klopp.
“That makes it enjoyable to work with him. We spoke about it from time to time that it’s not easy to improve us but Diogo did that, definitely.
“He has scored important goals. He is a player made for our style: pretty intense, technically good, really fast, good in the air, both feet really good.
“Diogo is a very interesting package and I am really happy we saw that and could realise the transfer. That has helped us a lot.”
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