Kenny Dalglish gave teenage debutant John Flanagan just two hours notice of his Premier League bow last night, then praised the youngster for a “fantastic” display.
The 18-year-old was handed his first senior experience against Manchester City, in direct competition to England winger James Milner, and played a major part in the Reds’ clean sheet.
And Dalglish was delighted with the Academy product’s performance.
“He never knew he was playing until six o’clock,” admitted Dalglish. “We’d never have had enough tickets to go around if we’d told him any earlier!
“The family would have been inundating the club for tickets and there weren’t any to be sold so we had to keep it quiet.
“But he did fantastic. He was playing against Manchester City, he was playing against an international in James Milner and he was never fazed. He just went out and played.
“He took one down early doors on his chest and passed it away and I think that settled him. He didn’t look fazed in any way, shape or form. It’s a fantastic credit to him that he did as well as he did.
“It’s also a reflection on the good work that’s being done at the Academy.”
The spotlight inevitably fell on Andy Carroll afterwards for his spectacular double strike, but Dalglish typically was keen to spread the praise around.
“They were good goals from Andy Carroll, but it was a good goal from Dirk (Kuyt) as well.
“It’s great to see the big man get off the mark. The first one was a fantastic strike and the second a good header. You can see the more Andy and Luis Suarez play together the better the understanding is.
“He and Luis played really well tonight and Luis was unfortunate not to open the scoring for us when he hit the post.
“We were delighted with the evening’s performance and it’s a great reflection on the players and a great reflection on how much it means to them.”
Dalglish added: “We thoroughly deserved the 3-0 victory. We got three goals in the first half and in the second just made sure we didn’t give them any encouragement. It was a very professional performance in the second half and we had plenty of opportunities to add to the three goals.
“It was a great win for us to beat a team as good as Manchester City and deservedly so.
“It wasn’t easy for us. I don’t think it’s easy to keep Manchester City quiet and I think we worked really hard to do that. You should give credit to our players for the way they played rather than look for maybe failures in somebody else’s performance.
“We would never have got that result if our players hadn’t have worked as hard as they did, and they had to work that hard to get that result against an excellent side.”
The victory took Liverpool three points closer to fifth placed Spurs, with the Londoners still to visit Anfield, but Dalglish refused to speculate on the possibility of reeling in Tottenham and claiming a Europa League place next season.
“Every time we sit at a press conference I say exactly the same thing,” he added. “We’ve got our reward for the victory. We’ve got another one, and a real difficult one, on Sunday at Arsenal. We’ll go through our fixtures, we’ll add the points up and we’ll see where we finish at the end.
“Mathematically it’s possible, whether we actually get there or not I don’t know.
“But it’s satisfying that we got three goals and kept a clean sheet - I don’t think there’s much wrong with the evening’s work.”
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