Cody Gakpo highlights room to 'improve' despite brace in win over LASK

Cody Gakpo has said that Liverpool can still improve despite securing qualification for the Europa League knockout phase with a 4-0 win on Thursday night.

The Reds saw off LASK at Anfield in a comfortable victory, ensuring their passage to the next round as Group E winners with a game to spare.

Dutch forward Gakpo impressed with a brace and even earned himself a perfect 10/10 in Anfield Watch's player ratings.

However, the 24-year-old isn't getting carried away and insists that both he and the team have more gears to go up.

"If it was up to me I would score all the chances! In the end, it was only two," he said after the game. "We can improve. It was nice that it went in at the end. It is nice when you score.

"It is important to top the group. We should be top of the group with the quality that we have. That is well done. We have to keep going because we have big goals for the season.

"We started well. We could have scored more today but in the end it was a good win. We have to just keep going. We have a lot of quality in the group and with this quality we can win a lot of games."

Gakpo's double – one in each half – ended a four-game goal drought for his club.

The former PSV forward has been in and out of Jurgen Klopp's team this season as a result of injury and the form of Darwin Nuñez. In addition to playing as a central striker, he has also been used in midfield and out wide.

Former Red Michael Owen suggested Gakpo – who has six goals in all competitions so far this season – may need to nail down a position in order to become a key player for Liverpool.

"It’s good being versatile. But if he was that good, and he was one of the first names on the team sheet, he would only have one position," Owen said on TNT Sports. "You don’t move Mo Salah from the right-hand side.

"If he’s going to be a top player for Liverpool I think he’s got to put in performances whereby Jurgen Klopp says, ‘right, Cody Gakpo, in the team, in that position, because he’s so vital’. At the moment he fits in a little bit which probably helps him get games under his belt.

"But I think he’ll want to be better than that to be a regular starter. I think the manager will decide that in terms of where he plays. He can just affect it by how he plays when he gets the chance like tonight, that’s the only way he can affect it as a player.

"You can’t knock on the manager’s door - well you can, but it’d be a pretty stupid thing to do to knock on the manager’s door and say ‘I’m only playing this position now’ because you might find yourself on the bench a lot of the time, so he’s got to do his talking on the pitch."