Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp is of the view that the four weeks he has been able to work with January signing Takumi Minamino have been hugely helpful, with the player joining in the middle of the season.
Following a two-month-long break, Premier League teams returned to small-group training on 19th May and the league restarted on 17th June.
The period gave Klopp an opportunity to work intensively with Minamino, as well as other fringe players who could feature over the remaining nine league games.
Liverpool signed Minamino in the January transfer window and, with the Reds not expected to spend over the course of the next transfer window, the player could be looked towards to make an impact. And Klopp feels time working with Minamino has been a big help.
“Oh yes, massively so [the time with Minamino has helped]”, Klopp told a video press conference.
“Look, a new player is coming in and usually, how it is with us especially, you say, ‘Come on, the first two, three, four months you don’t really judge’.
"We don’t, but I know the public does and that means then we always have to explain why it’s not like this [and] why it’s not like that and all these things."
Klopp stressed that the recent period is the longest he has had to prepare his Liverpool team without games and admits he even used the opportunity to involve more youngsters.
“And the more time you have, for whatever reason, the better it is and now we had four weeks – which is, by the way, the longest pre-season I ever had with any Liverpool side together.
"We were all together over that period and that’s a massive difference.
“Usually we have all together only one [week], or I think last year it was not even a week when Sadio [Mane] came back, for example.
“Yes, it helped. It helped him [Minamino], it helped the young kids a lot.
"Neco [Williams], Curtis [Jones], Harvey [Elliott], it helped them really [and] brought even more young kids up – Jake Cain and Leighton Clarkson."
Klopp will be looking for youngsters to step up and offer him more options over the course of the 2020/21 campaign, with Liverpool unwilling to commit to the financial outlay of signing Timo Werner, who has joined Chelsea from RB Leipzig.
