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Jurgen Klopp welcomed Joe Gomez to “adult football” as the youngster produced a polished display as Liverpool swept past Arsenal at Anfield in a “perfect performance”.

Two goals in each half from the forward quartet of Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mane, Mohamed Salah and substitute Daniel Sturridge proved far too much for Arsene Wenger’s men who were simply overwhelmed.

But the attacking prowess didn’t overshadow an improved defensive display, with Gomez at its heart at right-back.

A stunning block in the first half stopped a goalbound effort from Rob Holding while he also delivered a perfect ball with his left foot for Roberto Firmino’s headed opener.

It’s been a long road back for the former Charlton man since he ruptured his ACL in Klopp’s first week at the club with his first team efforts last year confined to the cup competitions.

Making his first start since the FA Cup loss to Wolves in January, Gomez showed impressive pace in races with Danny Welbeck and recovered well when he found himself slightly out of position.

Klopp said: “From the start, I saw 11 outstandingly good individual performances, even Danny (Sturridge) came on and had his input, also Milly - very, very important - and Marco (Grujic) did the job. So that's very, very cool. We need this of course.

"Joe needed time to come back in this shape and he knows it best. He's young, and not a lot younger than Trent, who could have played again, by the way.

“But because we have the options, we can give him (Trent) a rest. It was nice to watch (Joe).

“A really, really strong performance. I told him after the game: 'Welcome to adult football' because that was 100% adult football - really strong challenges.”

Klopp feels his Liverpool side have learned lessons in all five games this season and believes reproducing such fine form every three or four days thanks to the demands of Europe is one such lesson they’ve taken on board.

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“So far in the season, we learned from each performance, from each game we played, different things. We played an outstandingly good game against Hoffenheim and today it was the next step because we did it again.

“That's probably was the biggest challenge for us today. We need to learn that we can learn to do things like this all three or four days because otherwise we get a problem during the season.

“We wanted to show it today. We wanted to prove it to ourselves. We wanted to be spot on from the first second. We wanted to show our greed, our ambitions against a very strong side. You can never know if you can win a game, but we didn't actually think about winning the game, we thought about the performance.

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“The performance was perfect and the result is the result of the performance.

Klopp made just two changes from the game against Hoffenheim in midweek, with one of those in the goalkeeping position, opting instead for “rhythm and confidence”.

“If we miss too many (injured players) then you have no chance. Nobody can do the same. We never thought about who we miss, even when we know how big the problems are when you don't have these quality players involved. I'm not pleased about it, I expected it.

“It's intense, it's all intense. We all know we cannot line up the same 11 players for five or six months, we need to have opportunities to change different positions.

“Today we decided for a rhythm and confidence because I really thought a lot about the line up. They all looked so positive after the Hoffenheim game in training and I thought: 'Come on, let's try again'. Obviously it worked.”