Takumi Minamino scored and assisted to send Liverpool to the Carabao Cup semi-final in dramatic fashion, proving he can be a key player in January when Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah leave for AFCON.
Liverpool will face the Foxes again on the 28th. So they might not yet have had the last laugh.
Yet, it is clear that Jurgen Klopp’s famous ‘Mentality Monsters’ aren’t just in the first team. The drive and determination to fight back from 3-1 down to level the score at 3-3 in the 95th minute is outstanding.
Minamino really has become Mr Carabao this season. In three starts, he has scored four goals and assisted one, including one goal and one assist last night to make the score 3-3.
You could argue that this is what happens when you give a talented player consistent game time. He will be able to perform more consistently.
Takumi will shine in January due to AFCON
Naturally, Minamino is going to struggle to start ahead of Diogo Jota, Sadio Mane and Mo Salah because they are better but January could be his time to shine.
According to the stats gurus at WhoScored, Minamino had an incredible game. The former RB Salzburg star scored from five shots with three off target while two were blocked.
He had a 90% accuracy from 29 total passes with 26 of them finding their mark.
This is highly impressive when you consider most of them were in the final third. That’s not all. He played three key passes and got the assist for Jota’s goal which made it 3-2.
It was as close to a complete performance from Minamino as Klopp would have hoped for.
More incredibly than that, Simon Brundish says on Twitter that Minamino, who joined the club for £7.25m, has five goals this season for Liverpool from five shots on target, which is just outrageous. Get him in goal-scoring positions more and he’ll score more, it is that simple.
The German might not have been hoping to win the competition like some fans, but he would have been desperate to see Minamino and co. get momentum, match rhythm and confidence and I think we can say that happened.
Minamino hailed by Liverpool fans on Twitter
Liverpool fans were right up for the game. It might seem odd that they were more energetic in a cup clash that essentially counts for very little in the grand scheme of the football calendar. But Kopites have a strong connection to the downtrodden which, in this case, are the fringe players in the squad. Whenever Academy graduates are in the side, Anfield will be rocking.
But Minamino was a player who got the crowd off their feet. I called this website Rousing the Kop back in high school because I felt that years of irrelevance, trophyless seasons and watching rivals do bigger and better things made the Kop not as loud and boisterous.
Klopp came in and changed that and I guess you can say the Kop has been Roused.
More to the point, you could say Takumi Minamino, the absolute fella, roused the hell out of the Kop in the 95th minute to send the Mighty Reds to the semi-finals of the Carabao Cup. Liverpool fans on Twitter and absolutely everywhere loved it.
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