• £65m keeper drew gasps from crowd with chip over Knockaert • ‘He didn’t do it for showing off, he did it to sort the situation’

Jürgen Klopp believes Liverpool’s £65m signing Alisson is not a showboating goalkeeper and only uses his footballing skills when the situation requires it.

In the 1-0 victory over Brighton that took Liverpool to the top of the Premier League, Alisson brought gasps of astonishment from the Anfield crowd when he came to the edge of his box in the 69th minute to deal with an underhit back pass and waited until the last moment before delicately chipping the ball over the onrushing Anthony Knockaert to deal with the danger.

Mohamed Salah strikes again as Liverpool edge past Brighton Read more

Even Klopp admitted it gave him a nervous moment. “That’s not too cool for a manager. If it works then it’s cool,” Liverpool’s manager said. “I had a few centre-halves who were able to do things a centre-half should not do, like Mats Hummels [at Borussia Dortmund] constantly doing things which made no sense but he was really good in there.

“Alisson is obviously a goalkeeper who can play football, which is good. He’s confident enough to do it. He didn’t do it for showing off, he did it to sort the situation. He has a nice level of confidence, so he uses that. I like the save from the header more than the chip, but the chip was the right thing to do in that situation.”

Klopp has had to defend his massive outlay on a 25-year-old goalkeeper who had only one, albeit impressive, season at Roma but he has gone past that now.

Sign up for The Fiver, the Guardian’s daily football email.

“Was there criticism in England? I thought in England you got this [a pat on the back] for spending big,” Klopp said. “I couldn’t be less interested in that, by the way. We did it because we were convinced. We didn’t make the price. We only wanted a good player and the owners gave us the opportunity to do so.”

Klopp may find himself speaking as regularly about Alisson as he did last season about Mohamed Salah, who has picked up where he left off with his second goal in three matches. Salah took his tally to 29 in as many matches at Anfield with a low finish off the inside of the far post in a rare moment of precision in an otherwise disjointed game.

Despite a second defeat of the season, the Brighton manager, Chris Hughton, has been happy with their displays. “We need to make sure we have the same level of performance in the games we can realistically get points from,” he said. “If we get that level of performance throughout the season, then we’ll be fine.”