Brendan Rodgers has been speaking with our official website from Adelaide this morning, ahead of the third match of our pre-season tour, which takes place on Monday against – strangely enough – Adelaide United.
The trip to the Far East looks to have been a very positive experiences thus far, with the Reds having already chalked up victories against the Thai All-Stars (4-0) and Brisbane Roar (2-1).
Five of our six new signings have made the trip, with Roberto Firmino the only absentee due to his international commitments. James Milner, Nathaniel Clyne, Joe Gomez and Danny Ings have all impressed, while Adam Bogdan will no doubt be hoping to get his first full 90 minutes in a Liverpool shirt tomorrow.
Rodgers could return home to find a seventh signing awaiting him, having met Christian Benteke’s buyout clause in an attempt to prize him away from Aston Villa (via BBC Sport). However, the boss has been remaining tight-lipped on transfers thus far.
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“We might have some more business but currently as we sit I’m pleased with the players that we’ve brought in,” he said.
Nonetheless, he did highlight the importance of scoring more goals this season, after our failure to find the net on a regular basis proved to be our undoing during the previous campaign. We netted just 52 times in the Premier League as we slumped to a sixth place finish, almost half as many as in the 2013-14 season, when we came second.
“When I first came here, we lacked goals. I made it clear at the time that we needed to score more goals if we were going to challenge,” Rodgers explained. “Of course, the season when we were runners-up we ended up with 101 goals. Last year we didn’t score enough goals.
“But this is a new team; the ideas and philosophies are the same but we’re bringing in players that can really threaten the goal again and have a group of those. That’s something that’s exciting me.
“Young Firmino coming in has got experience of European football and is just starting to make his mark on the Brazilian squad and is a player on the way up.”
Firmino becomes the third Brazilian player in our squad, alongside Philippe Coutinho and Lucas Leiva, and Rodgers has revealed that he enjoys working with such players.
“I do enjoy working with the South American players, because not only do they fight, not only do they want to win, not only are they professional in their work, they’ve got all the ability to match that,” he said.
“Most of the guys that have worked with South American players really enjoyed working with them. He has that in abundance; he has the quality, the desire to score goals, but very importantly he has the will and the heart to fight for the team and that’s important.”