Jurgen Klopp singles out 'special' performance from Liverpool player in Newcastle win

Jurgen Klopp reserved special praise for Curtis Jones following Liverpool's impressive 4-2 win over Newcastle United on New Year's Day.

Curtis was one of three goalscorers at Anfield on Monday - with Cody Gakpo also scoring and Mohamed Salah bagging a brace - in what was an utterly dominant 4-2 win for the Reds. Liverpool accumulated a staggering 7.2 xG and 34 shots on goal during the win which sees them open up a healthy three point lead atop the Premier League table.

Key to their dominance on Monday was the all-action performance from Jones. Along with his goal, the 22-year-old also completed 91% of his passes, won 100% of his tackles, won four duels and completed 100% of his dribbles.

Speaking during his post-match press conference, manager Klopp was keen to praise Jones' showing at Anfield.

"Special game. Special game from Curtis, to be honest: his high press, his counter-press," said Klopp.

"We all know how good a player Curtis is, he is technically incredibly skilled, but he finds more and more direction in his dribbling, he gets better out of situations and his pressing and counter-pressing is meanwhile...he sets the level actually, how it should look. Really happy with that. He keeps every player in the game.

"How I said, the counter-pressing we played today was absolutely exceptional, absolutely. It was a school video, you have to show it if you want to do it.

"A lot of times people tell me my behaviour is not great and it's not good for grassroots football. OK, maybe the grassroots team want to play counter-press, then watch the video of that game, that is really helpful.

"So many good performances, cannot actually remember really a bad one, to be honest, they were all really good. But we had to be, because in the situations when we were not at 100% you could immediately see then Newcastle were there. But we made it really tricky for them tonight and it was a fully deserved three points."

Jones is in line to continue playing a crucial role for Klopp moving forward thanks to Dominik Szoboslzai's hamstring injury suffered on New Year's Day.

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