Pep Lijnders suggests he wants to make 27-year-old Liverpool player ‘angry’

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Liverpool now know that they’re going to have to cope without Mohamed Salah for a little while longer.

With Salah’s injury worse than first feared, it looks likely that he’ll miss the next few weeks at least for Liverpool. As they were already doing, others in the squad will now have to step up further.

So far, the man to really take on the Egyptian’s mantle has been Diogo Jota. With seven goals in his last 12 games for the Reds, the 27-year-old is in good form.

Addressing Jota’s run in his pre-Fulham press conference this morning, assistant manager Pep Lijnders praised the No.20, as well as indicating how Liverpool can get even more out of him.

“Really important,” Lijnders replied when asked about Jota’s impact of late. “Darwin [Nunez] as well by the way. That’s the sign of a good squad. That’s a sign of the character, the passion and ambition of the players we have, all of them.

“When Jota is in this angry mood, when he’s in this mood where he wants to run against the world, where he wants to decide, he can do things that are just incredible. We have to get him in this mood as often as possible!”

You won’t like him when he’s angry

We know what Lijnders is talking about here. It isn’t necessarily that Jota is emotionally angry when he’s playing his best, but you can really see when he’s about to step it up a level.

Against Bournemouth on Sunday was a good example of that. In the first-half, Diogo just couldn’t seem to keep the ball at all. But come the second period, he was so effective.

It was almost as though a switch had flicked in his head, and the Portugal international had decided that he was going to be the game’s decisive player. We’ve seen that so many times before.

When he’s in that kind of mood, Jota almost seems to run through players. His touch isn’t the cleanest, he isn’t the most skilful player in the world, but when he really wants to he simply bundles his way through.

With Salah now out for the foreseeable future, Liverpool are going to need that mentality more than ever from Jota.

If he wants to show that he’s now Liverpool’s main man in attack, then the time has come for that.

Having never truly nailed down his place ever since arriving in 2020, perhaps a little bit of an ‘I’ll show you’ attitude can be harnessed from Jota.

Although he’s often hailed as Liverpool’s most clinical forward, plenty still wouldn’t put the former Wolves man in an ideal starting front three. It’s time for that to change.

Make him angry Pep. Wind him up and watch him go.