Stoke City’s Marco van Ginkel: ‘We deserved much more against Liverpool’

A Stoke City fan collapsed and needed to be resuscitated by stadium paramedics when Liverpool’s Philippe Coutinho scored a last-gasp wonder goal to pinch victory.

He made his comments after Liverpool eked out a 1-0 win at Stoke’s Britannia Stadium on Sunday in their Premier League opener.

After his stints in defence last season, Can was probably glad to be back in midfield, and it was after his introduction that Liverpool started to retain possession and wrest some control of the game. Who scooped teh honours among the new boys and could Emnre Can’s impressive cameo help him force his way into teh starting line-up next monday. It was a one-off game, a unique game, but it still happened.

Despite being a regular in the side in the 2013/14 season when Liverpool finished 2nd, he was rotated often at the start of the last campaign.

He said: “I don’t know, I haven’t seen it again, but if the referee felt it was worthy of a yellow card for an elbow he was fortunate not to get a red under those circumstances”.

“To get a win and perform on the back of where we were 11 weeks ago, I thought it was an outstanding collective performance”.

The ECHO rated Phillipe Coutinho and Dejan Lovren as the Reds’ top performers on the opening day – both scoring an eight – but we wanted your views on this new look Liverpool.

Benteke, however, was largely forced to feed off scraps, and though his usual self in the air, wasn’t able to impose himself close to Stoke’s goal thanks to a lack of quality service throughout.

“Defensively we were strong; we knew we would have to defend well”.

Referring to Coutinho’s intervention, the former Manchester City man said: “I obviously saw him do it a few times last year – so to do it when he was on my team was nicer!”

“It’s hard for the guys to accept the result today because we were very even, and I didn’t think they created anything of any real note today”.

“I’d also like to take this opportunity to say hello and good luck to all our supporters at home and around the world and hopefully you are all very happy come May”. “In terms of the performance as this is the first day of the season I am quietly confident we can go on from this point”.