Diogo Jota makes exciting prediction about new Liverpool signing

Diogo Jota has heaped praise on new teammate Alexis Mac Allister after the Argentinian's debut for the Reds in Wednesday's 4-2 friendly win against German team Karlsruher SC.

The World Cup winner, who joined Liverpool from Brighton and Hove Albion in early June for £35m, came on at half-time and put in an encouraging shift in his first appearance.

"I really like these kinds of players," Jota told LFCTV after the game. "They just see these passes."

Mac Allister played on the right-hand side as one of two advanced eights — Cody Gakpo was the other — and frequently picked up the ball in half spaces, keeping the attack ticking.

This culminated in Liverpool's new number 10 skilfully delivering a through pass to Jota, enabling him to seamlessly take the ball in his stride and score his second goal of the game deep into stoppage time.

The Portuguese expects that this will be the first of many assists for Mac Allister - and the start of a fruitful relationship between the two: "I just need to make the run and he will make it [the pass]. I think I will link up very well with him."

Optimism for the new campaign

Commenting, too, on the Reds' continued use of the box midfield, Jota feels there are some promising signs ahead of the new season: "I think the last 10 games of last season, when we also played with this system, we showed a lot of signs of improvement, and we now have pre-season to really build on that and these ideas."

"I think we will be ready for the start."

Liverpool continue their pre-season tour of Germany on Monday with a behind-closed-doors friendly against another side from Bundesliga 2, SpVgg Greuther Fürth.