Jurgen Klopp is pleased with how pre-season training is going - but admits his Liverpool side face a 'proper challenge' in the coming weeks.
The Reds arrived at their Salzburg base last Monday and immediately got down to work as preparation started for the new season.
New signing Ibrahima Konate was among the players originally part of the club’s 34-man squad, although that number is set to increase over the next few weeks as the Reds’ international stars link up with their team-mates.
The Reds have so far been pictured doing a variety of sessions, with Virgil van Dijk, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Joel Matip and Joe Gomez all having taken part in some of the exercises.
Klopp has always viewed the European leg of his side's pre-season schedule as 'his' time with the squad and views the training camps as the perfect way to get his players fit ahead of the new season.
And while the Liverpool boss admits a lot needs to happen when his side gets down to the serious stuff next month in order for him to be 'satisfied' with the camp, he believes the sessions so far have gone exceptionally well.
“I’m not 100 percent sure if ‘satisfied’ is the perfect word for it but I’m really happy with it," he told Liverpoolfc.com.
“For being satisfied, a lot more things have to happen – we have to be in the season and know we can bring the things on the proper pitch like we do in the training sessions.
“But the training sessions look so far exceptionally well. We’re really happy with the circumstances, even with the weather.
“It’s raining a lot here as well but it’s good for training because it didn’t hit us too much during the training sessions, the pitches took the water pretty well.
“So we could really train a lot and exactly what we wanted to. So far everybody came through it and that’s really pleasing.”
Liverpool will commence their pre-season friendly programme in two 30-minute games against Wacker Innsbruck and VfB Stuttgart on Tuesday evening.
The Reds’ squad will then remain in Austria for two more games against FSV Mainz 05 and Hertha Berlin before the month is out.
Liverpool’s stay in Central Europe is longer than usual and the German believes the length of the camp will present his side with a 'proper challenge'.
“I’m the observer of all these things, I watch all these things and I have so many highlights, little things,” he said when reflecting on his side’s first week of pre-season training.
“But it’s difficult for me to mention them because it always puts a story out for a boy here or there and then you are in the middle of interest all of a sudden just because I said something.
“So let’s give it a bit of time. I’ve had a lot of highlights in training, saw a lot of good football and surprisingly good football from some players – because I didn’t know them that well. Really full of courage and bravery from the young kids.
“The more settled players, let me say it like this, they had a long holiday and you can really see they missed football a lot.
“All this together is a really good sign so far. But it is six days and in six days a lot can happen, in all directions; this time it was really good.
“We are in a much better position than we were a week ago, and you can’t always say that during a pre-season because sometimes so many things happen and you think, ‘Oh my God, why did we start in the first place?!’ That’s really, really nice so far.
“I’m just looking forward to it. Today is now a day off obviously because the boys need that, the whole camp is a proper challenge for all of us because we are quite long together. We have to see how we deal with that, but so far it was perfect.”
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