Origi hat trick lifts Liverpool by Southampton to League Cup semis

The description tallies with what several former players who worked under the German have said about him over the last number of months.

As with the first, it was the type of thrilling goal that Liverpool produced with such regularity during their march to the verge of the Premier League title two seasons ago, but which had not been seen since then, before the arrival of Klopp. “But they’re pretty hot on this game”.

Wednesday’s result, which cost Southampton a place in the Capital One Cup semi-finals, came despite them taking the lead in the opening minute.

“It is a great time to be in good form going into this Christmas period and, hopefully, we can keep it going”, he added. “As you could see we have no problem with matches against Manchester City, but we got Stoke. Everyone would be delighted with that”.

Opponents have been quick to catch on and it was noticeable that Southampton looked to hit frontman Graziano Pelle at the earliest opportunity at St Mary’s in a bid to negate the effects of the Liverpool press.

Bogdan has been preferred to regular number one Simon Mignolet throughout this competition and Coutinho (hamstring) was due to be assessed after training on Tuesday having missed the previous two contests.

“It’s timing, the right information is very important, of course”.

“We dominated games, particularly against Swansea, where we only got one goal and then against Palace where we had plenty of possession but didn’t create chances”. “We are not looking for another goalkeeper”.

“It could, but I’m not relying on that to prepare my team”, he said. He is completely open and he’s young enough to develop, to improve.

Jordan Henderson made a successful return to action with a substitute appearance off the bench on Sunday but the skipper isn’t ready to start just yet so he’ll be among the subs again tonight.

“The biggest fault you can make is thinking you’re already in the next round and it’s “only Southampton”. Klopp’s ability to remove that doubt from players’ minds means they are far less likely to make mistakes and in this way, Klopp is on the ball.

“We spoke at half-time and I don’t like to say too often, “it’s 3-1…be careful”, but always in a cup game you can not ignore that because it’s not over unless you stay in the game, stay concentrated and start better than we did in the first half – and that’s what we did”.