According to Jurgen Klopp, Darwin Nunez and Diogo Jota have timed their scoring returns well with Mohamed Salah leaving for AFCON.

Salah’s only home game for a month will be against Newcastle on Monday, with Klopp pleased Nunez snapped his 12-game goal drought at Burnley on Boxing Day, where Jota also scored inside seven minutes of returning from a hamstring injury.

Klopp believes Nunez and Jota, together with his other frontmen Luis Diaz and Cody Gakpo, can cover the big void left by Salah’s 16-goal season.

“Yes, absolutely, it’s great timing,” said Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp, who is also losing Wataru Endo to the Asia Cup following the Newcastle encounter. “It’s also important to note that we played the West Ham game without Mo starting, demonstrating that we can do something without him.”

“You want Mo Salah, he’s on the pitch all the time, but he’s not available.” It would help if you always found solutions, and we typically do.

“It’s not the first time, it’s a very common occurrence to lose your goalscorer, but we had it even worse in the past when both Sadio [Mane] and Mo left, and traditionally at least one of them went far in the tournament.” We know the Africa Cup of Nations is coming up, and Mo needs to leave, so we have to cope with it.”

Salah will play for Liverpool against Newcastle before departing for Egypt. 

Klopp is overjoyed to see Jota and Nunez back on the scoresheet, and he admires the former’s football knowledge, while the latter scored on Liverpool’s most difficult chance against Burnley.

“Diogo has a football brain, he’s a very smart footballer, he understands the game really well,” Klopp remarked. “The game has some of these players who understand the game on a deeper level, and he’s one of them.”

“It allows him to get a better understanding of the game earlier.” He’s also a fantastic finisher. I love Diogo’s story; he’s back, and I hope he stays for the next ten years.

“Darwin’s goal is an exceptional goal.” It was an outside-the-box first touch into the far corner. Diogo shut the game down, and we need these guys.”

Liverpool’s outstanding performance at Newcastle in August, when their 10 men rallied from a goal down to win thanks to two late Nunez goals, became a watershed moment in their season. Klopp claims it reminded everyone of the necessity of good defense and teamwork.

“It was an important day,” he explained. “We got the red card the week before against Bournemouth, and then the second red card, and we realised pretty quickly what we can do if we stick together.” We obviously have a lot of attacking guys on the team, but no one was thinking ‘What is my actual position?’ when we played with 10 men.