Liverpool boss Klopp talks Diaz 'potential and quality': Can he replace Mane? | OneFootball

Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp says Luis Diaz is ready to explode in the early weeks of the new season.

Klopp has explained how Diaz's comfort levels with the team's set-up and style of play has grown with a full pre-season under his belt.

He said, "Not with Luis specifically. We don't take him out, 'Because the other two scored and you didn't, come on here, I show you how.' It's unnecessary. It's not even a problem, it's just the moment. But, of course, we do finishing and that helps him, like it helps the others. We spoke last week about it when Sadio left, everybody was, 'How can you play without Sadio?'

"In November, December everybody thought when he will score the next goal but he's starting all the time, so these kind of things. You just let it go. You see the situations he had, like the biggest chances are just unlucky – it is. He had these blocked moments already a couple of times but he's in a really good shape actually, he looks really good – and that's more important for me, that he's in these situations. Not that I tell him after the game, 'You should have scored here or there.' The boys know that in the moment when it happens. So, that's a normal process."

Klopp believes Diaz can hit 15 goals this season.

He continued: "It's just different. He improved definitely, of course, with understanding what we are doing, these kind of things. But that leads then a little bit to strange situations as well because we want to be flexible on the wings, stuff like this, and that means he has to be slightly more inside. But then you realise for him it's quite good if he stays longer outside and these kind of things, so we get used to that. That will help.

"Unfortunately, it's always like this, a learning process, [it] never goes overnight. And then the next thing is it's his first pre-season with us and they all – I'm not sure if 'suffer' is the right word – but they all feel it, feel the pre-season. And when he arrived, he came out of a full season. But he will benefit from a full pre-season obviously because he was not on international duty in the summer, so he started on the first day with us, could do all the sessions since then – that's the most important thing. And all the rest will come.

"The problem is we sit here and talk about two games, whatever, didn't score or these kind of things. But it's, of course, in the long term not a problem at all, it's about just being prepared, fighting through these moments like that, like now the first game and now the second game will not be easy – it's at home, fantastic, can't wait for that, by the way, it's Monday night, great, all the things are positive. And now we have to go.

"The quality that he obviously has and the potential that he obviously has, if you then can put really miles, kilometres, whatever, in your legs during a pre-season, that will help you in the long term. That's what will happen but we are not in the long term, we are now and that's why I think for him, of course, just one goal and then we go from there."